


This Dark Place

by LadyJanelly



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Illegal slavery, Kidnapping, M/M, Modern Day, Supernatural Creatures, gladiator slavery, had to move the Benn's home town south by a few miles to keep the border out of it, kidnapped cage fighting werwolf, no hockey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-06 11:34:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 58,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11599803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanelly/pseuds/LadyJanelly
Summary: Waking up in a coffin was the least of Jamie's horrors, just the beginning of his pain and terror. He finds himself tortured, bitten, changed. Caged and forced to fight the other prisoners in this living hell. He thinks it can't get any worse, but the people who did this have a new agony to inflict on him. They give him someone to care about.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (I love Jagr, enough to make him...complicated)
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings. So many warnings. See notes at the end for spoilery specifics. If I forget something that needs to be mentioned, please feel free to tell me.
> 
> (I'm working on putting a complete cast of characters at the end notes--non-NHL people and minor roles that I didn't want to clutter up the character tags for)

Jamie wakes up slow, disoriented. It takes him long minutes to think _drugged_ and even longer to realize his eyes are open, that the utter blackness is all there is to see. He reaches out and there is a wall inches from his face, a top just above him. The tight space he’s in is vibrating, occasional shifts in balance implying movement, a vehicle changing lanes, making turns. Sweat sticks his hair to his face, the air around him warm and humid.

He takes two sharp breaths but then forces himself to calm because freaking out in an enclosed space with unknown ventilation is not productive. He wriggles around. Feels in his pants for his phone, his keys, anything he can use for a weapon or to get out, but it’s all gone. His feet are bare, the smooth wall of the box cool against his soles. He finds some holes, the size of a quarter down there, but there’s no way he can curl around to reach them with his hands. 

_Dumb,_ he chastises himself. He remembers the bar, some dive where nobody he knew would recognize him, trying to drink Ian and his lying mouth out of his system. He’d guessed, when the pretty little fire-starter had roped him in with a smile and a touch, that something weird was going on. When she found an excuse to get him into a fight he’d gone along with her plan, throwing the first punch in what ended up being a rather spectacular barroom brawl. He’d never done undercover work, never been more than a beat cop, but as drunk as he was, as shitty as his week had been, it had seemed like it was worth the risk for a chance to do something spectacular, to be a hero. 

He remembers following her out to an alley-way after, watching and wary for an accomplice because this sweet little thing sure as hell wasn’t a danger to a guy built like him. There had been a noise behind him, and he’d turned his back on her. 

His shoulder still aches from the barbs of her tazer, from his muscles all firing at once, bowing him back with the surge of electricity. 

The vehicle he’s being transported in jars to a stop and Jamie is painfully, terrifyingly brought back to his current circumstances. He can hear banging around, a man’s voice yelling. Quiet for long minutes, alone with the pounding of his heart, wondering if enough oxygen is making its way through the small holes to his lungs.

And then his box is sliding, sickening motion as it spins, and then the end by his feet is free, cool fresh air rushing in. Strong hands grab his ankles and he fights, even knowing it’s irrational to stay where he is, trying to keep them from pulling him out. He can’t even count how many hands are on him, holding him when he kicks. He’s yanked out of the box in one smooth motion, off of the bed of the truck he was transported in and dropped the three feet to unforgiving cement. The impact is hard enough to stun him, and the artificial lighting bright enough that his eyes water after so long in the dark and he can’t see anything. 

The guys who pulled him from the box get him on his feet before his legs have woken up and he staggers between them, blind and aching and dizzy, still sick from the drugs. There is a hallway, seen as his eyes start to clear, and a room beyond that with chain-link cages, half a dozen men in dog-kennels not big enough to stand in or stretch out in. It’s a fight-or-be-fucked moment if Jamie has seen one and he throws himself back, tries to twist around, but there are four of them and one of him and he’s still not nearly at full strength yet. He loses the element of surprise before he can break free. “Clear!” one of them calls, and their hands come away from him, and a new guy with a cattle-prod tags Jamie in the gut, doubling him over. 

He’s got nothing left to fight with when they scoop him off of the ground and dump him into a cage. A padlock closes with a very final-sounding click.

It’s quiet then, Jamie’s hands buzzing with unspent adrenaline. The man in the cage to the left of him grabs the heavy wire of the chain link fencing and shakes it, shouting abuse at their captors, but he’s not going to get far with that. 

“Settle down,” one of the kidnappers growls at him. “You’ll be wishing you’d saved your strength.” The caged man swears, but he gets quieter when the guard with the cattle-prod comes closer. 

Jamie looks at the guard, memorizes his face, looks for distinctive features, already composing in his head how he’ll describe it to one of their sketch artists. 

“What is this?” Jamie asks the guy on his other side when the guard wanders away again.

“No fucking idea,” he says, “I just got here a couple days ago.” He seems like a normal guy, dark-skinned, UnderArmor t-shirt, sweat-pants, bare feet. “There were some others. They came and took them one at a time. Nobody came back.” He’s the next one the guards come for. He fights getting out of the cage, and they don’t shock him into compliance. One points a shotgun at his chest and starts counting down from five, and the fight goes out of him. 

“Wayne Flemming,” he says to Jamie as he’s led off down the opposite door from the one they came in. Like he wants Jamie to remember it, remember him. He won’t forget the name.

It feels like an hour goes by, maybe a little more. Another prisoner is taken, and neither of them come back. There’s muttering down the line, about fighting back together, but there’s no way to get out of their individual cages. Jamie tries to get as much information as he can, anything to help him when it’s his turn. There are cameras in the corners of the room, and he wonders who’s watching from the other side. He tries to work the wire away from the frame of the cage, but it’s too strong to do bare-handed, and there’s nothing to use as a tool, not a belt-buckle or ring or key. There isn’t even a bucket to piss in.

Another hour goes by and then they come for Jamie, armed men, and looking at them, Jamie doesn’t think they would hesitate to shoot him down if he gives them trouble, so he climbs out of the cage on his own, joints creaking when he stands straight for the first time in hours. He watches for his chance, as they lead him through the door of no return, but they move like trained men, never so close that he could grab a weapon, calm and watchful and he doesn’t take the chance and try antagonizing them.

He’s led to a large room, fifty foot square, he guesses. Two doors—the one he came in through and one opposite. The cage in the middle is a forty foot octagon, leaving a narrow outer walkway for the guards, empty space in the corners; it has a gate on each side, matching up to the room’s doors. There are a dozen cameras all around the edges of the ceiling. There’s a water spigot in one wall, a drainage grate in the center of the slightly-sloping cement floors. The ground is wet, but there has only been a perfunctory effort at cleaning up the blood. _Wayne,_ Jamie thinks, or the other guy. Or some man from the other door. It’s harsher than any octagon he’s fought MMA in, but he can recognize an arena when he’s put in one.

The guards shove him through the gate and lock it behind him. He paces his half of the cage, gets a feel for the texture of the cement under his bare feet. He can hear them making bets. Not if Jamie is going to die, if he’ll even get to throw a punch. 

It seems like a long time, though Jamie knows it has to be quicker than it feels. The door across from him opens, and another set of guards bring in his opponent, and no, no, this can’t be the guy they’re wanting Jamie to fight. The kid can’t be older than sixteen, bare-chested, skinny and frightfully pale, hair that’s more ivory than blond. One guard has a pole with a noose at the end of it looped over the kid’s throat, and the other has his hands in a similar restraint. The third holds a shotgun, up on his shoulder, finger on the trigger. 

There’s a suggestion of threat there, and Jamie wonders if they’re fucking with him somehow, when they shove the kid as far into the cage as they can without getting in themselves. He watches the way the guards move, the moment of vulnerability as they step back. If the kid wasn’t in the way…but he is, and Jamie meets his eyes, washed out gray in the center of bloodshot red. _He should be scared,_ Jamie thinks, getting put in with a man with a foot of height and eighty pounds on him. He shouldn’t look so resigned, so sad.

“Go to it,” the guard with the shotgun says, “Make it good.”

Then the kid moves, faster than Jamie expects, confident steps taking him off at an angle and then he redirects his momentum, hits Jamie from a forty-five degree angle instead of head-on, faster than Jamie can get his hands up to block.

He hits the cement, stunned by the speed, the force of the blow. The cage wavers in front of him, the criss-crossing wire fucking with his vision. 

“Okay,” he breathes, and pushes himself up. “Okay, fuck that.” 

He looks up at the kid, and he’s pulled back to let Jamie get to his feet. The kid’s lips curl away from his teeth, more like a gorilla showing aggression than a smile of any kind. His teeth are sharp, rows of narrow white spikes. This. This isn’t some fight-club bullshit, some snuff-film weirdness. There’s no way someone so small could take Jamie down like that, especially since he didn’t move like he had any training, any skill.

And okay. If Jamie is gonna be up against some kind of monster, he’s going to make it count. Leave a mark that he was here. 

The kid makes a second rush at him, and Jamie is ready for the speed this time, and he was right about the lack of form, the creature moving off balance and telegraphing the strike aimed for the other side of his face, a perfect mirror for the first. He side-steps and twists away, catching the fist aimed for his head and twisting it around and down, bringing the kid down to the floor. He’s one half-second away from stomping on the over-extended elbow and disabling the arm, but the kid makes a hurt noise, a panicked yelp and Jamie is so startled he lets go. 

The kid is on him before he can get his balance, leaping on his chest, arms around his neck, claws latched onto his shoulders, skinny thighs around his waist. He gets an arm up in front of the kid’s throat, keeping those terrifying teeth off of his neck, and he hisses furiously at Jamie. He’s inhumanly strong, and Jamie stumbles under his weight. He’s gotta do something fast and he drops, turning as he falls so the kid takes the brunt of it, caught between Jamie’s weight and the unforgiving cement under them. He’s stunned, just for a second, but that’s enough, and Jamie bounces his head off of the cement. The kid makes another of those wordless cries and Jamie isn’t falling for it a second time, gets his arm around the kid’s throat in a choke-hold, holds on as he claws and scratches Jamie’s arms and face, increasingly panicked and then losing strength. 

“Enough!” the guard with the gun yells, and then the doors on both sides open, guards kicking them apart and bullying the kid back into the restraint. Jamie nearly throws up when a heavy boot catches him in the stomach and the cage wavers sickly around him again. They’re yelling at him to put his hands behind his head so he does, nothing left in him to fight them with. He kneels and watches his blood drip to the cement as the kid is hustled out, whatever the fuck he is bleeding too, dark black splatters against Jamie’s red ones. 

He’s taken to a different room, cement walls and a heavy metal door. He would like a little fucking medical attention now, because he’s pretty sure he’s concussed, and definitely in need of stitches. The cage he’s taken to has a big wood chair bolted to the floor, heavy leather straps at ankle and wrist and across the chest like a horror movie version of an electric chair. He fights then, for all he’s worth, but there are more of them than he can keep track of for long enough to count, one on each limb and another doing up the buckles. 

“Don’t do this,” Jamie warns, his courage failing him as the chest strap is pulled tight enough to strain his breathing. “You don’t want to do this.” He lays out his final card, the ace he’d tried to keep in his sleeve. “I’m a cop! I’m a fucking cop!” 

They ignore him, talking to each other like he’s an uncooperative steer at the slaughter-house, “Hold his arm, shit! Don’t let him go yet, okay, I’ve got it.”

He sits there panting when they’re done, out of breath and out of bravado. They leave him there, long enough that the blood on his face clots and dries, itches like mad when he crinkles his nose. He needs a drink of water. Needs the room to stop moving. 

Far away, he can hear an inhuman growl, and a man screaming. There were only three left when Jamie was taken. He wonders if they’ll go through all of them today, or save a few for tomorrow. He shivers, in the aftermath of the adrenaline surge, in the cool of the room. His sweat dries and he needs to piss. His hair is stuck to his forehead with blood. 

The door to the room clangs open and a trio of guards bring in another prisoner. This one is closer to Jamie’s build, six foot tall and close to two hundred pounds. He’s older than Jamie, grizzled white in his short beard. He’s being handled like the kid was, two of the men on poles attached to his neck and a two more with shotguns, but the man is grinning, even with his wrists cuffed in front of him, joking with the guards like he’s out for a Sunday stroll with four of his best friends. None of them jokes back.

“This one?” he asks when he sees Jamie. There’s something foreign in his accent, eastern European maybe. “Took down the vamp? Really?” he doesn’t look impressed. 

“Knees,” a guard says, and he folds there in front of Jamie like he’s gonna give him a blowjob. 

“What the fuck?” Jamie slurs, but he doesn’t expect an answer, not anymore. He tries to twist back, but there’s only so far he can move in the chair. 

“Don’t kill him, Jagr,” the guard warns, and the prisoner meets Jamie’s eyes, an apology in his smirk. 

“Welcome to hell, man,” he says, thick east-European accent on his words. And then he’s changing, the bones of his face warping and moving under his skin, hair sprouting from his cheekbones as his mouth and nose elongate into more of a muzzle. Jamie stares in disbelief. Even after fighting the kid, this can’t be happening, can’t be real. 

The man, the…creature, lunges forward and the guards on the poles give him the bit of reach it takes to get up on Jamie, sharp teeth closing on his shoulder, tearing skin, sinking deep.

He screams then, pisses himself with pain and fear. 

“That’s good, that’s enough!” a guard yells and they drag Jagr back, struggling against the strength of him, snarling and lunging at Jamie as they tear him away. 

They wrestle Jagr out of the room, and a different trio come in and unfasten Jamie’s bonds. He doesn’t fight at all as they drag him back down a hall. He can’t keep track of where he is, what direction they’ve gone in relation to the intake room or the fighting cage. His bare toes are dragging on the rough floor, a long bloody scrape. He tries to lift his legs, tries to walk, but he can’t get the coordination together. The bite on his shoulder is burning like it’s on fire. They dump him on a mattress on the floor and close the gate behind him. 

“Gonna fuckin’ kill you,” he hears someone yelling, maybe at him. “You hurt him, didn’t have to fuckin’ hurt him you sick fuck gonna tear you the fuck apart!”

He passes out to the background noise of angry curses, sliding into the welcoming dark without a sound.


	2. Changes

Jamie thinks maybe he’s dying. He’s freezing cold one minute, burning with fever the next. The claw-marks on his face and neck are festering, he can smell it when he moves and the wounds crack open, puss instead of blood leaking out. 

“Not my fault, he doesn’t make it to the full moon,” he hears the creature, Jagr, arguing with someone. 

Jamie opens his eyes once, when a guard stuffs a paper bag through the little door at the bottom of the chain-link fence that makes up the open side of Jamie’s cell. He can smell the food, burgers and fries. See the water condensing on the sides of the water-bottle the guard puts beside it.

He doesn’t have the strength to crawl to the food, can’t decide if the smell is enticing or revolting. His dry throat aches for the cool wet of the water, but he can’t make his body get up to go to it. 

“Please,” he rasps, when one of the guards walks past the fencing, “Please…” but nobody comes inside his cell, and he wonders how long he’ll lay there rotting before they come to take his body away. 

“Jordie…” he calls, begging for his big brother to come put a cool cloth on his head, to put on cartoons and lay with him on the couch like he did when they were little. 

———————

Jamie wakes to the reek of his own sweat and piss and puke. His skin itches everywhere, dried _substance_ cracking when he moves. He scratches his chest, and his fingers find a circular patch over his heart, a tiny wire sticking out of it, like the kind doctors use to monitor patients in the hospital. 

He feels…weird. Achy and hollow. He can hear voices, a “Shit, looks like he made it…” and a “Gonna fuckin’ kill him first chance I get.”

“Hey.” It’s a woman’s voice, maybe a girl’s, and Jamie rolls over, tries to focus his eyes past the wire of his cell. She looks young, maybe late teens, sweet oval face and light brown hair, wearing a t-shirt that’s torn at the collar, a knee-length skirt. Her left knee is smudged with dirt, and she’s sitting on a bare mattress in her own cage. He wonders if she’s missing, if someone has looked for her. She doesn’t look like him, or Jagr, not like the kind of person you’d grab for a cage-fight.

 

“Just rest,” she says. “Full moon’s tonight. You’ll feel better then. Just a little bit longer.”

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. That nobody has found her. That she’s in a cell and there’s nothing he can do to help her. 

She sighs and backs away from the bars. A guard walks between their gates, a shot-gun on one shoulder and a cattle-prod in the other hand. She looks wary but not fearful of the man, and Jamie hopes, he hopes that that means she’s been treated better than everyone else here that he’s seen. He tries to puzzle out why she’s here, but everything he can come up with makes his stomach twist.

“I’m Taylor,” she says when the guard is gone, and Jamie tries to lift his head, tries to bring her into focus.

“Jamie,” he says back.

“Rest, Jamie.” 

He does.

————————-

Jamie’s body aches, worse than anything Jamie has ever known. His jaw, his neck, his shoulders. Down his spine and arms and legs. Elbows and knees feel like someone took a baseball bat to him. His skin burns, like he’s been out on the ocean all day, crisped by the sun and flayed by wind-driven salt. A spasm rocks through him, all his muscles clenching down at once. There’s something…something inside of him. He can feel it twisting in his stomach, twitching through the muscles of his neck and shoulders, shuddering down the bones of his legs. 

He screams, howls, and other voices join his, echoing off of the walls and the cages, sending the very bars to vibrating with the sound of it. His pain and weakness wash away, and he breathes deep, the fetid air filling his lungs as he stands, stretches. The colors seem dull, washed-out. The angles of the cell walls mean he cannot see more than his own cell and the one across the way, but smells come to him sharp and clear—unwashed bodies and fast food, a mellow, too-sweet scent that he somehow associates with the boy he fought, the fake-banana smell of gun cleaner and so, so much blood. 

He loses time, lost in the maze of smells, in staring down at his own hands, heavily furred and tipped with dark sharp claws. He thinks he should be screaming in horror, but his brain refuses to click into gear, refuses to accept that these monster’s hands are his hands. He should feel violated, changed without his consent, but he can’t get past the ease with which every breath comes, _alive, alive, alive._

Movement in the other cell catches his eye, and he watches the creature there as it paces, as _she_ paces, long-muzzled like Jagr when he changed Jamie, golden brown fur, sleek lines. Bipedal, but just barely. Alien but not ugly.

“Taylor,” Jamie calls, and his voice is weird, rough. It should hurt after all his screaming, but it doesn’t; it’s just hard to form actual words. 

She makes a little welcoming yip and reaches out, fingers stopping just short of the wire.

“It took,” she says, not smiling even though the tilt of her head and angle of her pointed ears makes Jamie think she’s pleased. “You’re very handsome like this. Dark, like my brother.” 

Jamie stretches, just reveling in the absence of pain, in the new strength of his body. He considers the cell, the back and side walls look like heavy cement, two and three feet between the seams. There’s a PVC pipe fastened to the back wall with a five-gallon bucket under it, a stained and bare mattress. The front of the cell is just chain link fence with a framed gate set in the middle. He couldn’t bend the wires back bare-handed before, but now he has claws, teeth, a body made for the job of destruction. He goes to reach out, but Taylor’s gruff “No!” stops him. 

“No, don’t touch it. They’ve got it wired. It’s enough to stun you at least, and they’ll be here with armed guards by the time you can stand.” She looks down the walkway between them. “They get jumpy this time of the month. They’ll hurt you, and you won’t get out anyway.”

He paces the four-step length of the fence, looking up to where the frame of it attaches to the ceiling, down to where huge eye-bolts hold it into the floor. He sees now, the smaller wires, held off of the others by little plastic studs. So fragile looking. His claws dig into his palms with the effort of restraining himself, with choosing to wait until his effort would make a difference. 

“What the fuck is this place?” he asks, and hears a laugh from around the edge of his cell.

“Hell,” comes Jagr’s voice, light and teasing. “I tell you that already. You should have tried harder to die.”

“Oh fuck off!” Taylor snaps, teeth flashing, lip curled up. 

“Oh, shut up you fuckin’ dogs,” another voice calls, the one that had been threatening to kill Jamie before. French accent, male, annoyed. “Yap yap yap, I fuckin’ hate the full moon.”

One of the guards patrols through and Taylor pulls away from the front of her cell, and Jamie instinctively mirrors her. The man looks more on edge than Jamie had seen the last time he was conscious, finger on the trigger of the double-barreled shotgun he carries, head swinging left and right like he expects to be jumped at any second.

“I don’t know what it is,” Taylor murmurs. “They bring in guys like you, and make Phillipe try to kill them. The ones he can’t, Jagr tries to change. Sometimes it takes, and sometimes it doesn’t. They’ll probably start fighting you in a few days, against Dillon and Roussel.” Her lupine face twists, her ears lay flat back. “Maybe Jagr, but he gets special treatment because he’s a good dog for them.” 

Jagr laughs, low and throaty from his cell. “You break my heart, princess,” he teases. “You say this, like your hands are clean. Like you don’t kill when they say kill.”

Taylor snarls, but backs away from the wire when Jagr laughs again. Retreats to the back corner of her cell, dragging her mattress with her. She flips it up against the wall and disappears underneath. 

“Think you would still be live? If you fight her the first time instead of the vamp?”

Jamie feels a low rumbling growl, rising in his chest. 

“Leave her alone,” he snaps, but that only makes Jagr laugh louder.


	3. Training Day

Jamie paces the rest of the night. He finds the heart-monitor sticker on the floor by the mattress, turns it over in his fingers and tries to understand what it could be for, what fucking purpose there could be. 

He drinks from the spigot and tries to groom his fur with the water, washes the stench of his ordeal off of his body even if he can’t get far enough away from it to breathe without smelling it. He shakes off the water drops, shudders when he realizes how alien the movement was, how inhuman.

He assumes it’s the setting of the moon that sends a strange tugging sensation through his body, plucking the strings of his nerves. He shivers and twitches, and his body falls back into place, smooth arms and shoulders, his face and teeth in the right places again. 

His stomach rumbles and he pushes the mattress over to the back wall, sits down with his shoulder blades to the cool cement. On the other side, Taylor sleeps, curled up in a ball, knees nearly to her chest, slim arms around her knees. He has to wonder, if he would have been able to hurt her like he had the vampire boy, if he would have smashed her into the floor so easily. Maybe she was shifted when she fought the men, maybe Jagr is fucking with him and it wouldn’t have been an issue.

The smell of breakfast comes before he can see or hear the men pushing the cart. Bacon and steak, rich and savory. His mouth waters and his stomach churns. He has no idea how long it’s been since he ate. He can hear the scrape of a paper plate against the floor, counts the number of times until the three-man detail comes into view. One is pushing the cart and putting the food under the doors, the other two wary and armed.

Jamie stays back from the plate until they’ve served Taylor and moved on, but then he rushes to the meal.

He’s disappointed when he sees what’s there, a big serving of black beans and rice, no meat, no bacon. He turns and sniffs, and he hears Jagr joking with the guards, complimenting the chef, and he knows where the best has gone. He wonders if it was his own transformation that’s worthy of a reward, or something else.

Still, he’s starving, literally, and he scoops the beans into his mouth with his fingers, suddenly ravenous. Finishes what’s there and licks the plate clean. 

There nothing to do but wait, then. Taylor’s body language is still closed off, and she ignores it when he calls her name. 

“Look,” he says, soft and private. He’s sure Jagr is still listening, ready to add his jabs. “If you’ve hurt people here, if you’ve killed people here, it’s not on you. They set this up. They did this to us.”

She sighs and turns her back completely to him. 

The guards come for him, not much longer after that. Four of them with shotguns, four with noose-poles. Jamie thinks it’s overkill for one guy, even as strong as he is now. 

“Face the wall,” one of them says, and Jamie feels the fur pricking under his skin, the claws pressing against the nail beds of his fingers. He steps back as they come inside, guns guarding through the wire, the others always out of their line of fire. Methodical, military in their movements. 

“Not gonna say it again,” the leader warns, and pulls a funny looking pistol out of his belt holster. Jamie recognizes the tranquilizer for what it is, and while he really doesn’t want to go with them, doesn’t want whatever they’re going to do to him, he even more doesn’t want it to happen while he’s unconscious. He looks them over one last time, measuring the distances between them, trying to find any way to not do this. There’s nothing. They give him nothing.

He can feel the hair rise on the back of his neck as he turns his back, breathing hard and terrified, all that adrenaline with nowhere to go. 

“Hands behind your back.” He steels his shoulders against the urge to fight, makes his hands come together for the rope. It pulls tight, and he can feel the hard fiberglass edge of the hollow pole. Another two go over his neck, and he’s helpless, even as strong as he is now. 

They march him down a row of cells, and he tries to catch what glances he can of the other inhabitants—a girl with wild curly hair, a big man that looks Native-American, a man sleeping on his mattress, back to the door, like he’s given up on this place and everybody in it. 

The room he’s taken to is a lot like the ‘audition’ space, but instead of simple doors, there are double-doors, small cage-rooms on each side like an air-lock. The guards with the ropes follow him into it, the guns stay outside. If he fought now, at the very best, he would kill four men and have nothing more to show for it than a whole bunch of bullet holes.

He lets them guide him into the bigger arena, stands as they unloop the nooses from his throat and wrists. He turns on them, but the gate is already swinging closed, clanking shut with an electromagnet holding it tight even when he yanks on it with all his strength. 

Jamie paces, and they allow it. The cage runs all the way to the cement ceiling. The wire isn’t live, but when he gets a grip on it, the gun barrels all point at him, and he gets the hint and lets go. 

He can hear the men coming from the other side, just two guys with a struggling, wiry figure between them. They throw their captive into the small room, close the outer door and then the inner opens. Jamie can smell him as much as see him, body odor and fermentation, mud and piss and a rotting smell that oozes out with every breath. He’s shirtless, his pants worn and dirty, his hair long and matted.

Jamie glances at the guards, trying to figure out the game. Unlike the last time he thought he had someone outclassed in the arena, this guy doesn’t attack, cowering back and mumbling to himself.

“What the fuck?” Jamie asks the guards, and one steps up. 

“This is your first and only training session,” he says. “The lesson for today is that you will obey. You cannot escape. You cannot save yourself. You cannot help anybody else. You will do as you’re told.”

Jamie snarls and paces again, considers charging the chain-link wire of the arena, wondering if he could get through before they shot him down.

“Your order is to kill that man,” the spokesman says.

Jamie shakes his head. 

“Fuck you! Fuck you, I won’t.”

The rifle shot echoes in the closed chamber, and the skinny dude screams, red blood blossoming from just above the waistband of his pants. 

“Shit!” Jamie rushes to his side, puts pressure on the wound even though that makes the man writhe in agony. “What the fuck?!” He looks over and the guards are standing calmly, watching, waiting. 

“We need an ambulance!” Jamie calls, even as he knows there won’t be one, that this is what they wanted. 

It takes about an hour, for the man to die in Jamie’s arms, for his whimpers to quiet, for his pulse to slow and finally stop. 

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you,” he promises the head guy, hissing the words through clenched teeth. There’s a clank and rattle, and another man is brought to the arena. Darker than the last, more belly and skinny arms, bristling beard. 

“Your order is to kill that man.”

Jamie can rationalize it, that if he doesn’t, they will. He can’t…can’t bring himself to do it though, and they shoot the man through the bars, dropping him screaming next to the corpse. 

Jamie’s eyes are blurring when he puts pressure on the wound. Sorrow for this innocent bystander, probably snatched off the street just to die in this place. He pushes the guy to a sitting position and slips in behind him. Folds his elbow around the guys neck and presses in, cutting the blood flow off to the brain. Holds it as the man struggles, as he goes still, as he dies. 

He can already hear, the next victim being brought in, bald head and meth teeth, sunken eyes. 

“Kill him,” comes the expected order, and Jamie’s hands shake as he stands up, two men’s blood drying on him. The man tries to run from him, scrambles along the octagonal line of the cage, shaking the gate. The shooter raises his gun, and Jamie knows he doesn’t have much time. He clears half the cage in one leap, grabs the latest prey around his shoulders with one arm, under the chin with his other hand. His new strength is more than enough to snap the man’s neck, and he sobs as the body falls.

He’s almost numb as the fourth person is shoved in with him. He waits for the order, but then moves without hesitation. Saving them the fruitless panic. Saving himself the pain of hearing it. 

The fifth, the fifth is just a kid, maybe sixteen years old, begging non-stop for them to stop, for them to take him home, to let him go. 

A keening whine rises in Jamie’s throat. _I can’t help you_ he wants to tell the kid, who looks at him with horror. _I can’t help anybody_. His body trembles, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do when the order comes, if he’ll throw himself at the wire, if he’ll die before they murder this child. 

“Don’t touch him,” the boss commands, and Jamie sways where he stands, and then lets himself fall to his knees. He’s so grateful he aches. Grateful to these fucking monsters that just killed four people, using him as the instrument. A broken cry slips from his throat, and the guards open the inner door. The kid is happy to go back out, to get away from the bloody monster and the room full of death. 

“Take him to Phillipe,” the head-guard says, and the kid is taken away. 

“Have you learned your lesson?” the man asks Jamie, and Jamie screams against the floor. 

“We can do this all day,” he warns, makes a gesture to the others like he’s calling for another victim.

“Okay!” Jamie cries, “Okay, you win. Fuck you, you win.”

“Forehead to the floor, hands behind your back,” the boss says, and Jamie complies. He’s beyond exhausted when they take him back to his cell, dizzy and sick. He lays on the bare cement where they leave him, too traumatized to even crawl to his mattress. 

Taylor comes, and sits by the front of her cell, knees pulled up against her chest. 

“Sorry doesn’t do much good,” she says, “But I am anyway.”


	4. Roussel

Taylor sits as near to Jamie as she can, and Jagr tuts at him from the other side of the cement-block wall. Tells Jamie how stupid it is to fight them. Easier, to follow orders, to be rewarded instead of punished, to find a way to be useful. 

Jamie curls in on himself and shuts them both out, closes his eyes and sleeps because there’s nothing else to do. Eventually, the guards start another round of feeding. A fast-food bag is shoved under Jamie’s door, the scent of hamburger making him ill. 

“What good is it to starve?” Jagr asks, “What good to you? To anybody?” Of all the bullshit that’s come from the man’s mouth, Jamie has to acknowledge that one makes sense. That where there’s life, there’s hope, and if he lets himself go on a hunger strike, he’ll be too weak when the chance comes to change his situation. They are a smooth, professional organization, but nobody is perfect. If he lives, if he waits, the chance will come.

His stomach roils, but he unwraps the burger, forces himself to choke it down. Drinks from the spigot and pisses in the bucket when he’s done. He starts looking at the guards’ faces when they walk their patrols. Starts counting the time between them. Anything could be important, so he keeps track of as much as he can. 

He counts eighteen patrols, and his stomach is starting to grumble about dinner, when a group of six guards go past his cell, return a few minutes later with a man in their usual bonds. He’s tall, not quite as tall as Jamie, blond and pale. He’s sharply handsome in the way that Jamie would have appreciated if they met in a bar. The kind of guy Jamie would have bought a drink for, if he’d had the nerve, or kicked himself all night if he didn’t. 

The man pushes back against his handlers as he passes Jamie’s cell, an icy grin twisting his lips. “You the one, new boy. I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you.” Jamie stands, lifts his chin and squares his shoulders, and the man is taken on down the passage towards the fighting area.

“Roussel,” Jagr says. “Baby-vamp. Pissed at you for rouging up his buddy. You fight him, you watch out. He’ll go for blood.” 

Jamie isn’t really surprised when another transfer team comes for him a few minutes later. 

Roussel is loose in the combat cage when Jamie gets there, shirtless and barefoot, pacing the far end of the space. He moves light on the balls of his feet, his hands clenching and flexing, switching from claws to fists. Jamie feels his hackles rise, feels an ache in his jaw and along the long bones of his legs, the change floating just under his skin

The blood from the innocent men Jamie killed has been cleaned up, nothing but patches of wet cement to show what happened in this place, but he can smell it, rich and rusty.

The handlers shove Jamie through the inner gate and pull back. He thinks there will be an order, but the second the lock clangs shut Roussel is on him, rushing him inhumanly fast. Jamie gets his arm up to guard his throat, and Roussel slashes with his claws, tearing Jamie’s arm open from elbow to wrist. 

“I’m not your enemy,” Jamie growls, just barely holding back the wolf inside of him. He doesn’t want to fight this man, doesn’t want to kill him. His blood drips to the ground, but he can already feel the wound beginning to heal, the pain already fading to a persistent itch.

“You hurt him. You hurt Phillipe, and I kill you for that.”

Jamie shakes his head, circles around as Roussel stalks in closer. 

“I had no choice. He was going to kill me. _They_ did that to him. To me. Neither of us had a choice. I’m not your enemy.”

Roussel’s lips curl in another cutting smile, bitter and wild, a man without hope or joy. “They do this. That is no lie. But they not in this cage, so you’ll have to do.” His smile spreads wider and wider, sharp teeth filling his mouth in jagged rows. He rushes in again, and Jamie gives in to the wolf, lets his fingers curl into claws, lets his face stretch into a muzzle. 

He catches Roussel before he can slam into him, grabs him by the throat and twists, driving him back into the chain link fence. The guards raise their guns, but nobody fires. Roussel throws a sharp punch to Jamie’s head, and Jamie spins the both of them, slams Roussel into one of the support poles hard enough that it bends. 

Roussel uses the leverage to shove, and they both go down, Roussel’s fangs in Jamie’s forearm as he protects his throat. He’s fast, even with Jamie changed, he’s fast, but Jamie has a little bulk and a lot of training on him, and he throws Roussel off, rolls with him and ends up on top, one of Roussel’s arms pinned behind his back. 

This should be it; somebody should call it done, should say it’s over, break it up. Roussel keeps struggling, hissing and spitting blood, fights until his shoulder dislocates and he screams but can twist out of Jamie’s grip. His claws catch Jamie along his jaw, just inches from his jugular, and Jamie roars in rage, grabs Roussel by his good arm and swings him around, throws him against the cage. Roussel struggles to get back up, but one leg won’t hold his weight and his left arm flops by his side. Black blood oozes down a cut on his face, the skin flopping open where it hit the cage.

“Enough!” the guard in charge calls, and Jamie trembles with bloodlust, wants to finish this, wants to feel his prey go still and dead under his jaws. Roussel hisses, snaps his sharp teeth together.

A rifle booms, and both combatants jerk. It takes Jamie a second to realize that neither of them is shot, but the spell is broken and no, Jamie really doesn’t want to be responsible for any more deaths today, even of an man who would happily tear him to pieces. 

One of the inner doors unlocks and the guards order Roussel that way. He drags himself, grievously wounded but still snarling at Jamie, and they put the noose over his neck, bind his hands, and drag him away. That leaves only three guards with Jamie. Armed, but Jamie wonders if it would be enough, if they could kill him before he got through the cage, if he could heal fast enough to tear them apart before they raised an alarm and more of them came. He wonders what the other prisoners would do, if they’d take the chance and hit the electrified wire of their cells, hope to be mobile before any of the guards could focus on them.

With an effort of will, Jamie forces the wolf back down, shakes it off like a second skin and reveals the man beneath. He’s not willing to die for nothing. Not yet, at least. He needs to talk to Taylor, maybe even Jagr. See what has been tried, see what’s failed before. 

He won’t die here. Not if he can help it. The trick will be getting out while he still has a shred of himself left.


	5. A wild Tyler appears

Jamie thinks he’ll talk to Taylor and Jagr, that they’ll talk to the prisoners they can hear, that it’ll be easy to put a rebellion together. That they’ll get out of here while he still has some shreds of his self left, while he can still look in a mirror and not hate the man he sees. 

“If it was so easy, I do it a year ago,” Jagr tells him.

“Don’t,” Taylor advises. “Don’t even talk about it. If they find out…” 

Every time he tries to bring it up, she goes to the far side of her cell, curls up with her back to him. 

He meets his fellow fighters in the ring, a wiry werewolf named Shaw that takes a hell of a beating before he goes down, a huge bruiser called Dillon that turns into some sort of bear creature, a half dozen other wolves (not Jagr, never Jagr). They fight him against Roussel time and again, and Jamie has been trained how to learn from fights, to figure out what works and what didn’t, how to adapt. He’s got the skills advantage on most of the others, and enough of a size advantage on Hilary, the only other well-trained combatant they put him against, that he’s not really challenged after he adapts to his new biology. 

He makes it almost two weeks before he snaps as they’re marching him back to his cell, jerking against the noose and yanking one of the handlers off of his feet. Another warns him and a third pulls his leash so tight Jamie can feel his pulse pounding in his head, air and blood supply being cut off. There’s a commotion up ahead, past Jamie’s cell, a splash and the crackle of electricity, a wave of stench wafting down the hall. Metal screams as Shaw crashes through his cell’s door and into the corridor. 

Jamie twists his hands against the cables holding them together, feels the cord cutting into his skin as he pulls them apart, the hard snap as the restraints break. 

Shaw is almost on them then, Jamie thrashing to get free to be able to help him. The armed guard closest raises his shotgun, fires it straight into Shaw’s face and sends him writhing and screaming to the floor. Jamie gets his claws on one of the guards, and his throat is so fragile, so delicate, crushes so easily in Jamie’s grip. He turns, using the man as a meat shield, but there are guns on either side of him.

He feels the blunt impact on his lower back, the boom seems like an afterthought, and then he’s falling, his legs no longer connected to his body by nerves. He howls, fear and pain and he can’t move his legs, can’t feel anything. They leave him there while they drag Shaw off and then dump Jamie back in his cell. 

It takes him four days to heal the damage enough to stand. He hears from Taylor, that Shaw used his piss bucket and the spigot in his cell to short out the electric fence on his front wall and get out. Everyone’s water is turned off in retaliation. 

“Don’t fight them,” she whispers in between patrols. “They’ll hurt you. They’ll hurt you worse next time. You can’t win.”

He can’t fight them, not directly. The cameras are still rolling, as far as Jamie knows (and if not, what’s the point to any of it?), and he resolves to make the show as un-entertaining as possible. To finish the fight as fast, as efficient, as lifeless as he can. They sometimes put the remote heart monitors on him before putting him in the cage, and he peels them off before he engages. 

They beat him, after the fights that he spoils, and his new body takes the punishment, heals it over when they’re done. If they didn’t kill Shaw, and didn’t kill Jamie, then there’s some value in keeping them alive. Some higher officer giving orders. They think of new ways to hurt him, fire and electricity, and he refuses to defend himself the next time he’s in the cage, lets the girl with snakes in her hair kick his ass without raising a hand. 

They leave him in his cell after that, three days if he’s counting them right, and then everything changes. 

===========

It’s well after two in the morning when Tyler leaves the club, stumbling past the bouncer who kept the riffraff out, kept the party limited to the rich and the beautiful (and the rare specimen like Tyler who knows he’s both).

“Have a nice night, sir,” the bouncer says, and Tyler grins at him, pulls out a twenty and slips it into the man’s breast pocket, leaning heavy as he does. “Have a safe drive home.”

Tyler grins and pushes off, gets his feet pointed in the right direction. He’s feeling good, buzzing along in the afterglow of alcohol, music, dancing and fucking in the back room. The orgasms were nice, but he hadn’t met anybody he wanted to see in the morning. 

He checks his phone out of habit, two missed calls from dad, five hours ago, and then instead of sending a text, there’s a fucking email. Tyler clicks it just to make sure it’s just dad being dad and not some sort of family emergency, and it’s the usual _not comporting yourself like a young man of your station_ and a whole lot of _not taking this seriously_ with a side of _results of your midterms are disappointing._. It’s the same blah blah blah as always, ending with the usual threats to disown him and/or cut off his credit cards if he doesn’t learn to conform. Like he would actually do that again with the way Tyler embarrassed him the last time he tried, fucking his way through a string of intentionally unacceptable and unsubtle boyfriends until the money started flowing again. (In retrospect, Tyler is most amused by the tattoo artist. Infuriated dad and gave Tyler an absolutely amazing sleeve. It was win-win for everybody)

Tyler pockets his phone, looks around. The street is busy, people gathered outside of clubs talking, couples kissing against the walls, others just out for a smoke before heading back indoors. He wanders down to the lot on the corner, trying to remember if he left the car there tonight or the night before. Did he get a ride? The nights are all starting to blur together. He checks the key chain in his hand to see which of the cars he’s even driving this time. 

A silver mini-van pulls up in front of him, and the girl behind the wheel is pretty (not that girls do much for Tyler, but he can recognize these things). She rolls down the window and calls him over, “Hi, can you help me?” She looks sweet and lost and he wants to be her hero, even if he doesn’t want to get in her panties. 

He goes over to the driver’s door, gives her his best smile. “What’s up?” 

She smiles, bright and friendly. “My friend told me there was a Thai place here on the corner, but she didn’t know the name of it, and I’m not finding it. Do you know what she’s talking about?”

Tyler nods, takes a step in towards the van so he doesn’t have to yell his directions. “Yeah, what you want to do is…” 

He doesn’t see the men before they grab him, one on each side, coming in from behind, hands like steel around his upper arms. He’s so startled he laughs, so startled he doesn’t even fight as the side door of the van opens and he’s shoved in. The seats are gone, and another man is there, grabbing Tyler and pulling him down to the floor. 

“What?” Tyler asks, more confused than scared. Trying to make sense of it. The door slides shut with a very final clang. “Did my dad send you?” He’s flipped over onto his stomach, a hard knee in the small of his back holding him down. One of those who grabbed him holds his wrists and the other pulls a length of duct-tape off of a roll with an ominous rip.

The woman drives; Tyler looks back over his shoulder, catches her eye in the rear-view mirror. She looks relaxed, almost bored, like this is an everyday experience, kidnapping people off the streets.

“This one? You’re sure?” one of the guys asks. “Isn’t he a little tall?” 

“When you’re head of acquisitions, you can pick the targets,” the woman says. “Benn won’t mistake him for a combatant; that’s the important part.” 

Tyler struggles against the guy with the hands, but doesn’t get far. The tape wraps around his wrists, tighter and tighter, up his arms halfway to the elbow. He feels hysterical laughter bubbling up in his throat again.

“This is like a scared straight thing, right?” he asks, voice cracking. “Look. Look. You don’t have to do this. My dad. You don’t have to do this; I’ve got money. I can pay you.”

The guy flips Tyler over onto his back, swings his arm. His fist cracks Tyler on his left eye, the impact so sharp that his vision blinks white for a second. The shock of it leaves Tyler gasping for air, struggling to react. He’s never, ever been hit like that before. 

They drive, and Tyler tries to get his terror under control. If dad sent these guys to scare him, they’re doing a real good fucking job. If they aren’t dad’s people, then he’s fucked, he’s so fucked. He’s seen their faces. He can see out the windows of the van, see street signs and the buildings going by. They’re going south of town, past abandoned factories and empty warehouses. The complex they pull into has a sign on the gate, something about concrete, but it’s dark. 

“Where are you taking me?” he asks, unable to stop himself, “What the fuck do you want?” 

The van stops and the men lift Tyler to his feet, one shoving him out the door to where the other catches him. They hold him between them and search him, taking his phone, keys, wallet, shoes. 

“Please,” he begs, and gets punched in the stomach for it. They drag him inside, through a series of gates that are opened remotely, down a dark hall. There are rooms there, chain-link on the fronts with gates in the middles, the walls huge cement blocks. People are in the rooms, and they come up to watch as he’s manhandled along, feral and dirty, wild-looking. 

They stop in front of one cell, and men with guns come up, point their barrels at the man inside. He’s tall, shirtless, shaggy-hair and broad shoulders. He looks pissed, frowning, hands curled at his sides.

“No,” Tyler says, and starts to struggle; there is no way this ends well, no way in hell. “Fuck, fuck no!” 

But the guy doesn’t rush the guns, and Tyler can’t fight the men shoving him forward. They get him to the edge of the open gate and shove him roughly inside. His arms are still taped together; he manages to twist just enough to take the fall mostly on his shoulder instead of straight on his face, but it hurts and he yelps as he falls.

“What the _fuck_?” the man growls, ignoring Tyler as he paces the back of the cell, eyes on the guards. The gate clangs shut and the men pull back. 

And then all of the man’s dark intensity is turned on Tyler. He frowns, nostrils flaring. 

From the other side of the wall a male voice asks “How’s he get a fuck toy when he don’t do shit?” 

The man in the cell takes a step forward and somehow it’s scarier than the van or the guns or the long walk through the cement factory. 

“No,” Tyler mumbles, “No no no no.” He flips himself onto his back and scrabbles backwards, trying to get away, trying to delay the inevitable. 

“Wait,” the man says, but Tyler’s too afraid to listen, his body on autopilot. “Don’t…” the man says, and then jumps forward, his hand closing around Tyler’s ankle. Grabbing him and dragging him away from the front wall. He holds Tyler down with one hand on his chest, and they stare at each other, Tyler waiting to die (or worse), but the man doesn’t move. 

“The wire,” the man says, presses his lips together uncertainly. He turns his head and spits on the fence, and there’s an electric sizzle as it hits. 

“Shit,” Tyler breathes, and goes limp under him. 

The man keeps his hand on Tyler’s chest. Glares past the fence at the guards until they leave. 

“What the fuck?” Tyler asks, hopes he’s not gonna get his ass kicked for it. 

“I was gonna ask you the same thing,” the man says, his voice softer now. “What the fucking fuck.”


	6. Introductions

They bring the kid to Jamie’s cell, beaten and bloody, his left eye starting to swell shut. They throw him inside without a word of explanation, watch like they’re waiting to see what Jamie will do. Jamie watches them, waiting for the order to rip this kid’s throat out, to put him out of his misery before they can torture him. 

Then the kid scrambles back from him, like Jamie is the threat (and he is, even if it won’t be his decision) and since nobody has told him not to, Jamie grabs him before he can electrocute himself. If he listens, he can hear the ominous hum of the wire, low and pervasive. If it is meant to knock werewolves on their ass, he’s pretty sure it’ll be enough to kill a normal guy. 

And the kid is a normal guy; after Jamie knocks him down, after the guards retreat, he can’t stop himself from sniffing, from scenting the boy’s hair and skin. Rich cologne, a half-dozen different types of alcohol, sex and other men. Not a whiff of wolf, or bear or snakes or the old-paper smell of the vamps. 

“This is all your blood,” Jamie says, and the kid chokes. Jamie lets him pull away, lets him crawl backwards to one of the solid walls. He knows he should say something reassuring but can’t think of what. Reassuring seems so far away now, so alien.

“You gonna fuck him or what?” Jagr asks from his cell, low and teasing, and Jamie snarls. 

“Damn it, will you _shut the fuck up _for once?” Taylor snaps from across the hall.__

__Jamie watches the boy’s face, his strong slim jaw, fine high cheekbones, thin lips, golden-brown eyes. He’s banged up, but not like he would have been if he’d been through the audition, and none of that class of fighters has been out of their cage all day. So they took this kid, a little roughly, and brought him here, straight to Jamie._ _

__The kid is pretty, Jamie guesses, under the swelling and scrapes and bruises. But Jamie hasn’t done anything at all worth a reward, and certainly not one of this caliber._ _

__The kid licks at his split lip, raises his eyes to Jamie’s._ _

__“If I. If I ask you to get this tape off of me, are you gonna kick my ass?”_ _

__Jamie blinks, and puts his hand on the kid’s shoulder, turns him around so he can get at the tape. It’s all bunched up, and Jamie shifts his hands to claws to rip through it. He can feel the kid shaking, smell his terror. He wants to say “I’m not gonna hurt you,” but it might be a lie._ _

__“Why are you here?” Jamie says._ _

__The boy turns back around, rubs at his wrists, the red stripes where the tape had cut into his skin, torn off the hair when it came off._ _

__The kid shakes his head. “I dunno. I dunno. They just grabbed me. Took me off the street. Brought me here and threw me in. Are you…are you Ben?”_ _

__Jamie frowns. “Yeah. Jamie. Jamie Benn. How’d you know?”_ _

__“They said that Benn wouldn’t think I was a fighter. I’m not!” he hastens to add. “Not at all. I don’t. I don’t know what the hell this is.”_ _

__Jamie sighs. He can practically feel Jagr, Taylor, the other wolves listening in on this._ _

__“What’s your name.”_ _

__The kid’s pink tongue flicks out again, worrying at the cut over and over. “Tyler. Seguin.” He takes a shuddering breath. “My dad’s gonna come looking for me. I mean he’ll have people come looking for me. He’s. A really important guy.”_ _

__Jagr snorts, Taylor sighs. Jamie shakes his head._ _

__“Nobody’s gonna find you,” he says, because the sooner the kid, Tyler, stops thinking about people he loves, the longer he’s likely to survive._ _

__Jamie had been sleeping when they brought Tyler in, and now that the excitement is over, he heads back to his bare mattress, lays down._ _

__He hears a sniffle, closes his eyes and turns away. Lets Tyler have as much privacy as there is to be had. He needs the time, anyway, to figure out if this can help them escape, if anything can give them a chance._ _

__=================_ _

__Jamie tells Tyler he’s fucked, like no fucking hope fucked and turns away from him, goes and lays down on a dirty mattress._ _

__Tyler’s breath hitches. This can’t be happening; this can’t be real. He feels a real sob rising in his throat and chokes it back. His eyes burn, water. The lights are still on, not giving him the mercy of darkness for his breakdown. He pulls his knees up, hides his face in the crooks of his elbows, waiting for this to all be over._ _

__He sleeps before anything else happens, his ass going numb on the cement floor. He dreams of Benn fucking him, holding him down in the back of the van, the other people from the cages clustered around him, jeering, cheering._ _

__He wakes to a touch on his arm, startles so bad he thwacks the back of his head on the wall._ _

__Benn takes a half-step back from where he’s crouched in front of Tyler._ _

__“I’m awake,” he says, and Tyler doesn’t understand why that’s important until he adds “If you want to use the bed.” And Tyler doesn’t want to use the bed, filthy and bare in the middle of the room. It’s covered in brown stains like dried blood, so much someone must have died there. He doesn’t want to piss Benn off though, doesn’t want to offend his offer at hospitality._ _

__“Thanks,” he croaks, his voice wrecked by holding back his sobs, his face tight and itchy from tears. His left eye is almost swollen closed, hot and sore, leaking at the corner. He moves gingerly to the bed. Pins and needles run up his legs from sitting so long. He curls up, and it’s just as bad as he thought, crunchy and rough under him. He closes his eyes though, and as horrible as the bed is, it’s better than the floor._ _

__It feels like just a few minutes later that Benn is waking him up again._ _

__“They’re turning on the water in a minute,” Benn says, and Tyler doesn’t understand the significance, but he gets that it’s important so he stumbles to his feet, follows Benn over to a faucet on the wall. His head aches, hangover and crying and getting hit all adding up to a sick throb that he can’t escape._ _

__Benn turns the knob and nothing comes out of the faucet for long seconds, and then there’s a gurgling and sputtering and cool water splashing out. Tyler’s not sure what to do with it, like—what? Benn grabs Tyler’s hands and holds them under the water, cups around them until Tyler gets it._ _

__“Drink as much as you can,” Benn says, catching what Tyler misses and bringing it to his lips. When he’s had enough, he uses the water to wash his face and neck, and that seems like a great idea so Tyler does too. Between being vertical and the splashy sounds of the water, a new problem presents itself._ _

__“Uh, I gotta…” Tyler starts, shifting his feet. Benn blinks and nods over to a five-gallon bucket in the corner. Tyler wants to protest, wants to say _Are you fucking kidding me?_ but keeping on his cell-mate’s good side is definitely the priority here. Benn turns back to the water, turns his back to the bucket and Tyler takes care of business. He’s just finishing up when he looks across the way and the girl there is watching him. _ _

__“Shit!” he swears and zips his pants back up. She blinks like she hadn’t even realized it could be a problem and then averts her gaze. Tyler shivers._ _

__A clang comes from down the hall and Benn shuts the faucet off. “Breakfast,” he says, and steps back against the back wall, puts his hands behind his neck. He gives Tyler a little nod to do the same, so he does. Armed guards escort a food trolley down the hall, one of the workers stuffing fast-food bags through little slots under the doors._ _

__When the procession is out of sight, Benn stalks to the bag and opens it, frowns and then tosses it to Tyler._ _

__Tyler looks in the bag, and there are two sausage McMuffins inside, room-temperature and kind of stiff. Benn is still frowning out of the cell and Tyler is lost again._ _

__“What…?”_ _

__“Eat,” Benn says, not unkindly, like whatever is pissing him off, it’s not Tyler. Tyler might not be very hungry, but he’s not gonna argue. The muffins go down hard, too-dry and the meat is kind of congealed. He goes to the faucet for more water, and it trickles to a stop seconds after he turns the knob but he gets a sip._ _

__“They’ll turn it back on for lunch,” Benn says, and Tyler isn’t sure what to do with himself now._ _

__“Sit,” Benn orders, so Tyler does, back against the wall. Benn crouches in front of him, looks him over for a long time._ _

__“You said they grabbed you off the street,” he says, and Tyler nods. “Where?” Benn asks._ _

__Tyler flicks his tongue over his lips, tastes the coppery sliver of new flesh where it was split. If he tells the truth, the guy he’s locked in with will know he’s gay. He’s just not sure he’s up to lying right now, not in the face of Benn’s penetrating scrutiny._ _

__“Uh, Cedar Springs and Throckmorton.”_ _

__Benn shakes his head like that doesn’t mean anything, like it doesn’t out Tyler. “What city.”_ _

__“Oh. Oh, uh, Dallas.”_ _

__Benn blinks and swears under his breath, and Tyler sits small and quiet._ _

__“You said last night that they grabbed you and brought you here. You weren’t drugged? Unconscious?”_ _

__Tyler shakes his head. “No. I. We’re southeast of town. Past Fair Park.”_ _

__They sit for a long time, Benn asking questions, Tyler doing his best to answer them. He doesn’t know a whole lot about Dallas’ industrial areas. Benn seems to have met the ‘head of acquisitions’ before. Tyler wonders how a guy like him got snatched, but he doesn’t have the nerve to ask._ _

__In the end, Benn sighs. He looks resigned, maybe a little guilty._ _

__“I’m sorry you ended up here,” he murmurs._ _

__Tyler’s breath catches in his chest, and he has to know. “That guy—” he gestures through the wall, to where the man Benn calls Jagr is. “He said I’m here for you. For sex.”_ _

__Benn flinches and closes his eyes. Shakes his head. “No. I. I didn’t ask for that. They’re…I think you’re here for them to hurt me with.”_ _

__That just doesn’t make sense. Tyler opens his mouth to say so, and Benn’s eyes snap open, a sharp frown between them._ _

__“Look!” his tone is stern, hard. “I want to tell you I won’t hurt you, but I can’t promise that. I want to say I won’t fuck you, but it’ll be better than what they’ll do to you if I don’t. I want to say I won’t kill you, but if they give that order, you’re dead anyway.” His lip trembles as he finishes, and he looks away, brown eyes so anguished._ _

__Tyler wishes the water was running, because his mouth is suddenly so dry he can’t get the spit up to swallow. He doesn’t. Doesn’t want to get raped. Doesn’t want to die. And he really doesn’t want Jamie, who seems so upset by the idea, to be the one to do it._ _

__“I…” he starts, but Jamie isn’t looking at him, he’s standing up and moving to the front of their cage. Men are coming, a group bigger than the one that brought breakfast. They stop in front of Jamie, but most of them are focused on the cage across the way._ _

__“Hey!” Jamie calls, turning the attention of more guys with guns on them, and Tyler cowers as far away from Jamie as he can in the small cell._ _

__The rest of the men though, they’re focused on the girl. One raises a funny-looking handgun and it makes a small ‘pap’ noise and Tyler gets a glimpse of a fluffy red dart embedded in her side._ _

__“Hey!” Jamie calls again as the girl falls and they open her door. “You fucking assholes! What are you doing to her?” Two men go into her cell and start fastening restraints to her wrists and ankles. She’s weakly struggling, and one of the men pulls out a hypodermic needle and gives her a shot. Tyler can hear Jagr cursing through the wall, a snarl like he’s got a dog in there with him._ _

__Jamie’s hands curl like he wants to rip down the chain link fence, like he wants to tear into the men._ _

__The guns stay pointing at him though, even when the girl has been carried off, even when she’s gone._ _


	7. Chapter 7

Jamie paces the front of their cell, fighting against the wolf inside him, against his hackles rising and his jaw wanting to jut into a muzzle. He balls his hands up into fists, feels the claws biting deep into his palms. It takes more effort than he thought he was still capable of, but he fights it down for Tyler’s sake, because the kid is scared enough, even without knowing what he’s trapped here with.

He listens, to the men carrying Taylor away, to Jagr’s snarling quieting into angry mumbles.

“They don’t…they’ve never taken someone out of a cage unconscious,” he tells Tyler, feels like he owes the guy some explanation. “There’s a ring that way, and they take us there to fight.”  He looks in the opposite direction, the way they took Taylor. “I don’t know what’s that way. More cells.” Vampires for sure.

Tyler doesn’t say anything, so Jamie paces, and watches. He guesses it’s about an hour later that they bring her back. She’s upright, but still barely conscious, moving her feet sluggishly to avoid getting dragged. The guards lay her down almost gently on her mattress, and one of them is frowning like he’s got a sour taste in his mouth.

Jamie ignores the guns pointed at him, crouches so he can be that tiny bit closer to her. “Taylor,” he whispers, even though there are guards watching him. She rolls on her side, pulls her knees up against her chest, feet disappearing under the cover of her skirt. Tears gather along the line of her eyelashes.

“The fuck did you do to her?” Jamie snarls at the guards, and the one that looked so angry feels like he’s a second away from answering when another taps him with the butt of his rifle, sends him back the way they came.

“You fucking assholes!” Jamie rails, getting to his feet, thinking about grabbing the wire. It won’t get him anywhere, but this helplessness hurts more than the Medusa’s snakebites. “At least give her a god-damn blanket! What the hell is wrong with you?”

The guards withdraw, but a few minutes later three of them come back, the sympathetic one with a white sheet folded in his hands.  Taylor doesn’t move as they come up, as they open her gate, and Jamie steps back from his, afraid of spoiling this first acknowledgment of their humanity these fuckers have made. The man shakes the cloth out and in that moment of cover Taylor moves, shifting so quick, so painlessly it’s beautiful instead of ugly. She hits the first guy, claws raking his throat open. The other two are on her though, stun-batons raining down. She’s still impaired by the drugs, and they beat her down, bloody her fur. Chase her back to the far corner so they can drag their companion’s corpse out of the room. Down the corridor, wolves howl and growl, electricity crackles as someone hits the wire. Taylor snarls but falls on her knees when she tries to go after them, exhausted by the outburst.

It shouldn’t have gone like that; a sympathetic guard would have been a possible resource for them all, but Jamie can’t find it in himself to be angry at her.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” Tyler whispers behind him, a hysterical mantra that Jamie doesn’t have the energy for right now. He can’t afford to not deal with it though, as little as he wants to. He takes another second to calm himself, to make sure that the guys have locked up Taylor’s gate and are leaving her alone, to school his features into something like calm.

“I’m high,” Tyler says, his voice tight like he’s barely keeping himself together. “They. They gave me something in the food and I am tripping so hard right now and none of this is real none of this is real.”

Jamie crouches down in front of him, hiding Taylor from his eyes. “You’re okay,” Jamie murmurs. “You’re okay. You’re not high. This is real, but you’re okay.”

Tyler hugs his knees to himself, like a mirror of Taylor in the other cell, eyes wide, looking up at Jamie like he’s his only anchor in the world.

And Jamie, he really, really doesn’t want to touch him, doesn’t want to become more attached. But the kid is hurting, lost and scared and totally unprepared for this shit. He takes a deep breath, and puts a hand on Tyler’s shoulder, and then the other one. Tyler makes a choking breath like a sob, and falls forward, head on Jamie’s chest, shaking and trying to hold himself together while Jamie hugs him.

Taylor whimpers across the hall, whines like a dog left alone in a thunderstorm. 

Jamie presses his face to Tyler’s hair and closes his eyes. Holds on and pretends he’s anywhere but here.

Jamie holds Tyler until he stops shaking, until he stops gasping these tight broken breaths. When he seems like he’s better, like he can sit alone and not fall apart, he leaves Tyler’s side, goes to the front gate to check on Taylor. She’s still furry, curled into the corner of her cell, licking her wounds (literally).

“Are you okay?” he asks, knowing the answer but unable to help himself.  She snarls at him, a flash of white teeth showing her displeasure.

===========

Taylor isn’t talking, Tyler is half in shock, Jagr muttering to himself. Lunch comes, and again they give Jamie just a little more than enough for one. He lets Tyler eat first, finishes up whatever the kid doesn’t want. The water comes on and they drink their fill. Jamie turns his back while Tyler takes his clothes off and cleans himself. When the dinner water comes on, Jamie takes his turn.

Days stretch by. Taylor won’t change back, won’t respond with anything but growls. She makes a nest of the bloody sheet the guard tried to give her before she tore out his throat.

Tyler and Jamie sleep in shifts, mostly, to share the bed without _sharing the bed_. Once, Jamie wakes up and Tyler is sleeping on the cement floor, just his head pillowed on the mattress. He wants to scoff at the idea that the can’t both fit, but it’s probably better for them to keep some distance. Some boundaries.

Other supers are taken to the arena, but not Jamie, not Taylor, not Tyler. Jagr beats Shaw, struts back to his cell with a smirk on his face. Dillon wins over Hilary. Roussel and the Medusa tear each other up so bad they’re both carried back to their cells.

And finally they come for Jamie, the fight detail with their poles and guns and tazers. They order him to the gate, point a rifle at Tyler. Jamie wants to fight. Wants to shift and tear into them. Wants to avenge them all. He can’t let go of hope though, can’t suicide and take Tyler with him. Not while they’re still breathing, while there’s some chance of a mistake, of an escape.

They take him to the arena, put him in one of the small holding pens but don’t open the inner gate to the ring. One of the guards walks up, meets Jamie’s eye. “You’re gonna make this pretty. You’re gonna make it last.  For every minute short of five, we’re gonna put a cigarette out on your boy’s back. Do you understand?”

Jamie’s lip curls and he shifts, snaps at the air between him and the man, watches him flinch back like the heavy fence isn’t between them. He understands, but hopes his response reads more as anger over the arena than worry over Tyler. He knew this moment was coming. The only defense he has against their manipulation is pretending not to care.

He turns to see who it is he faces, and he frowns to see two men in the cage across from him. The wolf he thought he fought two days in a row is actually two; twins. It’s almost a relief, because they won’t be taken out too quick; they’ll make it easy to run down the clock.

“Hey!” The guard calls Jamie’s attention back. “You lose, and he spends the night with Jagr.”

Jamie turns away from the man before he roars, and the gates open, letting the combatants into the ring. Jamie turns his attention to the fight at hand, the first time up against more than one opponent. They spread out to flank him and he chooses the one on the left, hugs the fence on that side, slashing out with claws, snapping with teeth. The first one falls back from the assault, rolls and his brother leaps over him, catching Jamie across the brow-bone and bloodying his face. Jamie blocks the hand away hard enough to half-spin his opponent, dodges around and has a moment of breathing room to try and wipe the blood out of his eyes.

Don’t lose. Don’t win too fast. Beat two fucking werewolves. Piece of cake.

Jamie wonders if they’ll still hurt Tyler if Jamie ends up too dead to care about him.

It’s a risk he can’t take.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

_What’s my time?_ Jamie thinks as he limps to the exit gate, as he lets them collar him and bind him. He’d tried, but not winning and not losing at the same time had been harder than he thought. One of the brothers had gotten in an early hit, slicing Jamie to the bone over his left hip. He’d had to drop the gloves then, punching one so hard between his shoulderblades that he’d heard the crunch of multiple bones breaking and the guy had gone down with half his body limp. The other had gone crazy then, clawing four deep lines across Jamie’s cheek, pounding him with heavy blows that Jamie had to return in kind to avoid losing, maybe dying. He’d finally pinned the other wolf’s arms, gotten his jaws around his throat, holding, crushing in, cutting off his breath until he’d fallen limp to the cement.

Jamie has no idea how long it took. Five minutes, it’s a ludicrous amount of time to expect a fight like this to last, with supernatural killing machines locked into just a few yards’ space. He tries to run the fight back through his head as he practically drags the men back to his cell. Plays every exchange of blows and tries to estimate how long it took. He comes up with not-enough, not-enough, not-enough.

They get him back to his cell, and Jamie stares for a minute, but there’s nowhere Tyler could be hiding—there’s nothing there but mattress (flat on the floor), bucket, spigot. 

“In,” the guard orders, and Jamie goes, too hurt to put up a fight, even if he knew where Tyler was. He can smell the cat-piss odor of Tyler’s fear. He’s not sure if the cell always smelled like that and it’s only being away from it lets him notice, or if Tyler was terrified when they took him out. 

They get him unfastened and Jamie stands there dripping blood to the floor, swaying as his body just runs out of adrenaline to power it. He waits, because they have to bring Tyler back to him, because whoever is running this shitshow would have to be dumb to kill him. Stupid to use him as a leash for Jamie and then throw him away the first time he’s used. Whoever it is, they aren’t going to make that mistake.

Jamie tells himself this as he waits, until he hears the shuffle of feet coming back down the corridor and suddenly Tyler is there, held tight between two of the guards, others coming behind them, armed. Tyler surges forward when he sees Jamie, eyes going wide with distress.

“Jamie! Jesus fucking Christ!” Tyler swears, and struggles against his handlers. They drag him to the front of the cell and kick the backs of his legs until he goes down to his knees. He doesn’t have a shirt on, sweat glistening on his chest, on the whirls of the tattoo that goes down his left arm.

“The fuck did they do to you? Oh Jesus, sit down, Jamie, you have to put pressure on that; you’re bleeding.” 

“Don’t…” Jamie says, as Tyler struggles against them. Tries to remember not to show how much this random guy they locked up with him matters. Tyler’s giving it away with his worry, with his open fear on Jamie’s behalf. 

A man behind Tyler pulls out a cigarette, a lighter. “Two minutes and forty-nine seconds,” he says, and Jamie shakes his head. No, no, that’s wrong. It had to be more. He tried so hard, let them hurt him so bad, stalling for time. 

“No,” Jamie whispers, begs, sick at his failure. Tyler looks up at him, so worried about him, so confused at what’s going on.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie tells him. He should have broken the kid’s neck the first time the guards looked away. Should have set him free from this dark fucking place.

The lighter clicks and Jamie shakes his head, turns his eyes to the floor. Across the hall, Taylor raises her muzzle and howls, the mournful cry picked up by a few others. 

“Don’t,” Jamie begs the guard, gritting the word through his teeth. Begging has never helped before; hasn’t helped him or Taylor or any of the poor shits they put to the slaughter when Jamie was being trained. “Please.” 

The glow of the cigarette’s cherry isn’t so ominous in the brightly lit corridor. Tyler finally finally follows Jamie’s sight-line to the threat, struggles anew with the men holding him down. They’ve got him too securely though; he’s a good-sized guy but he doesn’t have the leverage.

“Two minutes and forty-nine seconds leaves two full minutes unfulfilled,” the smoker says, and Jamie clenches his jaw. 

“Don’t,” he says again, and this isn’t begging, this is warning. He tries to hold the wolf back, but he can feel the bones of his face shifting, hips and shoulders and hands changing configuration. “Don’t,” he growls.

The ember touches bare skin and Tyler screams, thrashes against the restraint. Screams and Jamie cannot stand it, cannot control the rage that rushes up through him. He charges the fence; feels the crack of electricity jar through his body, flashing his vision white, slamming him backwards. The cement floor is hard when he hits, but he rolls, comes back up. Guns are pointed at him, but the fragile web of electric wiring is torn, ragged, sparking here and there but no longer a barrier. 

He roars, charges again, thirsty for blood, for revenge, for freedom. 

He sees the muzzle flash before he hears the crack of gunfire, feels the burn of bullets slamming into him, knocking him down. He hits the ground again, and it hurts so bad, knocks all thought out of his head. He falls, and Tyler is screaming for him, screaming in terror and pain. 

Jamie grimaces, tries and fails to blink the blood out of his left eye. He can’t breathe; tries to cough and chokes on thick fluid. He sees the flicker of the lighter behind Tyler, as the torturer gets the second cigarette ready. 

“No,” Jamie moans, tries to get a grip on the floor to drag himself forward, but his claws won’t catch. He passes out to the sound of Tyler’s scream.


	9. ouch ouch ouch

The cigarette pressing into his back whites Tyler out like nothing he’s ever felt before. It’s more than pain (but it’s that too). He can’t see Jamie on the floor, bleeding, dying. Can’t even see the cell wire in front of his face. He can’t think, can’t reason. In that moment, the burn is all he is, like it’s as much inside him as it is on his skin. His scream dies, but the burn lives on, fierce and persistent. Fried nerve endings send a constant stream of distress to his brain. He breathes, and it hurts hurts hurts. He tries to jerk away from the ember, but it’s not touching him anymore, hasn’t been touching him for a while. The aftereffect goes on and on, making it hard to think. The guards are talking, but he can’t make the sounds into words. They pick him up and drag him. Unlock the gate and throw him in with Jamie.

Jamie. Oh god. The thought cuts through the haze. Jamie had looked like the wrong end of a machete fight when Tyler was brought back. And then and then. Tyler’s brain kind of stutters around Jamie shifting shape, Jamie the fucking werewolf. Then they shot Jamie a whole bunch of times and he fell and he’s bleeding and Tyler crawls to him, feeling for a pulse, for breath. He knows to put pressure on the wound, but which fucking one? There’s blood everywhere, over Jamie’s bare torso, over his shredded pants. 

Shit shit shit. “He’s not breathing,” Tyler says to the guards who are still watching over his shoulder. He leans down, puts his ear right in front of Jamie’s mouth. Okay, not-breathing was maybe an overstatement. He’s breathing, just irregularly, and not very well. 

“Here,” a guard says, and passes a small shrink-wrapped bag over. The gate closes again. Tyler picks up the bag, his hands already sticky with Jamie’s blood. He can’t get a grip so he tears it open with his teeth.

“Take out the Halo patches. Put one over each bullet wound, entry and exit.” All the other guards are gone. Tyler thinks the one that’s left is the one that burned him. 

It feels like it takes forever. Patching each wound, using the quick-clotting sponges on the slashes. He counts six places where bullets went in, five where they came out. 

“He’s…it’s still in him,” Tyler says. TV has taught him that’s a bad thing. 

“Leave it,” the guard says. “He’ll live.” 

Jamie makes a gurgling gasp and Tyler isn’t so sure about that. 

The group of guards come back again. One points a gun at Tyler, another one points at Jamie. Two more pick Jamie up and move him to his mattress, back against the wall, and they they stand watch while the wire is repaired, tested.

And then Tyler is alone with Jamie, who is a monster but also his only friend here. Jamie who is the only reason Tyler has value here. 

His back still burns, and he wishes for the water to come on, to have a way to cool the injuries. It hurts so bad he can’t even tell where the scars are going to be, his entire back awash with it.

He kneels on the mattress beside Jamie. Checks his pulse one more time. It feels stronger. Or maybe Tyler is just hoping it does. He’s tired. So fucking tired. He lays down, puts his hand on Jamie’s chest. Feels the slow, unsteady rise and fall of it, the little hitches that might be pain or might be choking past obstructions. 

Tyler tries to stay awake. To be there if Jamie needs anything. To be there if he dies, so Jamie’s not alone. 

He tries, but there’s nothing left, and the last thing he hears as he falls asleep is Jagr asking Taylor if she thinks they’ll give Tyler to him when Jamie’s gone.

===========  
Jamie wakes slowly, drifting close to consciousness and then sinking back again. He smells blood, thick and engulfing. He flares his nostrils, searching. Underneath the blood is Tyler, the scent of his sweat, the faint odor of seared skin. Jamie’s mouth tastes like rotting meat, like dental surgery gone wrong.

He tries to work his eyes open, dried blood crusting them over, gluing his eyelashes together. He gives up before he can see light. His skin is stiff, crackly. His fingers twitch. Tyler’s hand presses down on his shoulder.

“Don’t try to move,” Tyler says. Jamie lets himself go limp under that touch. Not moving is a good idea—great idea. His everything hurts. Tyler’s hand leaves and Jamie can hear a faint plastic-on-plastic noise. Something cool and moist touches his lips, wipes across them. Jamie’s tongue flicks out and meets Tyler’s fingers. Wet with fresh water, and Jamie is thirsty, so thirsty. He sucks the water off of Tyler’s fingertips, tries to lift his head to follow when they’re pulled away. 

Jagr is talking, taunting, but Jamie doesn’t spare the energy to listen to him.

“Shh,” Tyler says, and his fingers come back, guiding a slow trickle of water into Jamie’s mouth until Jamie isn’t so desperate for water that he thinks he’ll die from it. Jamie lies still for a while, just enjoying being not-dead. 

“Eyes,” he says at last, his voice hoarse. He remembers screaming. Tyler shifts around, and there’s the sound of tearing fabric, and then wet cloth wipes over his eyes, loosening the blood. 

“You are a fucking mess,” Tyler murmurs, and Jamie blinks up at him. 

He looks…different. Lines of pain around his eyes. He’s sitting facing the door, but his back isn’t touching the wall. The set of his mouth, the angle of his jaw. He looks determined. Adult in a way he hadn’t seemed before. 

“I’m sorry,” Jamie says, that Tyler had to grow up so fast. That they hurt him. That Jamie couldn’t keep him from the pain, that he can’t save him.

“Me too,” Tyler says back. “I probably did a shitty job on the first aid.”

Jamie shakes his head. Decides that’s a bad idea and he probably shouldn’t do that again. There are big white patches stuck to him everywhere, like the time when he was five and he’d tried to cure his brother’s chicken pox with band-aids.

“I was. Supposed to last longer. The fight. Your back. That’s because of me.”

Tyler presses his lips together, a frown wrinkling his brow. “They did that because they’re assholes,” he says. That’s true too, and Jamie closes his eyes. His skin feels twitchy where he’s hurt, like small clusters of cells are shifting, wolf to man and back again. It feels…weird. 

They stay there, Tyler’s hand on his shoulder, until food comes and goes. Burgers, so Jamie guesses it’s lunch or dinner. Tyler fills their water bottles from the spigot and tears the food into small pieces to hand-feed Jamie. Inch by inch the pain recedes into something bearable, ignorable. He’s still weak, still needs Tyler to help him sit up. 

Tyler winces, and Jamie realizes that Tyler’s injuries, while so much less serious than Jamie’s, aren’t healing with werewolf resiliency. 

“Lemme. Lemme see?” 

Tyler half-turns, and Jamie can’t help but reach out, resting his fingertips near the marks. They’re small and the scabs have turned kind of a yellowish color, but the skin around them is pink instead of red. Jamie leans in, but he can’t smell infection over his own reek.

Jamie sighs and Tyler twitches away from his touch, frowning again. “They did this,” he says, and Jamie swallows down his regret and guilt. If Tyler doesn’t want to hear it, Jamie won’t make him hear it.

Tyler helps him to his feet, to the bucket to piss and back. His pants are shredded beyond wearing, and Tyler lays the scraps back over Jamie’s lap when he’s horizontal again, preserving whatever illusion of dignity Jamie has left. Even that short walk is as much as Jamie can take, and he closes his eyes again. 

He wakes up, and can’t remember falling asleep. Tyler is arguing, raising his voice. “No, this is bullshit!”

Jamie groans and tries to roll over. There’s less pain, but he’s exhausted, can barely lift his head. Tyler…Tyler can’t talk to the guards. They don’t like that, and they sure don’t react well to being challenged.

He finally manages to roll over, and Tyler is near the gate, arguing with the the food guy. Or at the food guy. There’s pretty much only one-way communication going on there. 

“He needs food. Like intensive calories. His body, what he’s doing, it’s not fucking magic! He’s healing a shitload of damage and that takes energy.”

The food handler passes their paper bags under the door, and Tyler kicks it back. Jamie groans. Shit. Oh shit. The barrel of a gun turns Tyler’s way and Jamie tries to focus but his head is all wonky, his arms so heavy.

“You gonna shoot me?” Tyler asks, and Jamie can hear the tremor in his voice, there despite the bravado. “He’s. He’s fucking dying in here. His body is eating itself to fix the damage and he’s not gonna be able to fight. He’s gonna be useless and you’ll hurt me or kill me anyway, so fuck you. You shoot me, or you get a doctor in here, or you get some better fucking food!”

The food-deliverers exchange a look, and walk away, Tyler yelling after them as they complete their rounds. “Fucking assholes!”

The threat is not over. They’ll probably come back when the meal is over. Jamie collapses back, and Tyler comes to him. He looks like shit, eyes shadowed with lack of sleep, bent and guilty-looking.

“I don’t…it’s not just because I wanna live. I just. Tried to think what would matter to them.”

Jamie can’t find the strength to speak, but he twitches his head in a small nod. Tyler’s gambit for better food has resulted in no food at all, but Tyler’s hand in his makes it seem less important. As long as Tyler is safe, not much else matters. He closes his eyes, lets the world drift away.

“God damn it Jamie I swear to god…” Tyler is angry, and Jamie isn’t sure what he’s done wrong. He swims to the surface of consciousness, opens eyes that are gritty and sore. There’s something in his mouth and he tries to pull away from it, spit it out, but Tyler holds it there.

“I am not fucking kidding, Jamie, you have to drink it.” 

The thing in Jamie’s mouth is a straw. It takes a second, but Jamie remembers how to use it. The fluid he draws up makes him gag, too-sweet and lukewarm. Artificial vanilla flavor. Tyler takes the straw away until Jamie finishes choking and then puts it back.

“Sorry, bud,” Tyler says, and he sounds less angry, less…scared. “Come on, a little more.” 

Jamie drinks in little sips, and when Tyler has decided that was enough, there’s a new straw with water in it. He feels better when he’s done, less hollow.

“Thanks,” he rasps. Apparently Tyler’s tirade was successful. Jamie would have preferred a plate of rare steak, but this works too; he actually feels better when the drinks settle. He shifts around, and Tyler helps him sit up again. 

“Bucket?” Tyler asks.

Jamie shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“You look like shit,” Tyler tells him, and Jamie snorts. 

“Yeah, you too.” Jamie frowns. “Your back?”

Tyler shakes his head. 

“How long…?” Jamie asks, and Tyler shrugs. 

“Couple of days, I guess. You. I wasn’t sure you’d wake up.”

“I woke up,” Jamie says. Tyler mixes another scoop of shake into a water bottle, shakes it to froth and passes it over for Jamie to sip on. It still tastes awful. The texture is worse.

“They wouldn’t send a doctor. One of the guards came, with a camera. He wanted me to roll you over so they could get a good picture from outside.” 

Jamie runs a hand over his own side, feeling the weird leanness of his body. When he was growing up, he went from short and chubby to tall and solid without any lanky, knobby stage in between. Thin feels odd. Uncomfortable. His fingernails catch on the edge of one of the emergency-aid patches and he starts to peel it off.

“They wouldn’t let anybody in,” Jamie says, “It’s not protocol. To get closer to us than strictly necessary. They’d rather I died than risk an escape.” He frowns, trying to puzzle things out. “They follow all the rules, bring us in dark and disoriented. Keep overwhelming numbers anytime we’re out of the cages. Everything is right, except you.”

“What?” Tyler’s voice sounds off, uncertain, and Jamie looks up from the puckered pink bullet wound he’d been examining.

“You’re off-protocol. Like. Not by-the-book. Like an order thrown in that forced someone to improvise. Make bad choices. You’re local, you’re brought in awake.” He shakes his head. “It’s important, but I don’t know how to use it. Not yet.”

Tyler sits back down on the mattress beside him. “You said you didn’t know what was down that way,” Tyler says, pointing opposite from the arena. “There’s cells. Eight on each side. There’s one besides us that has two prisoners, a man with light-brown hair and a pale kid.”

Jamie shakes his head. “Not like us. They’re both for fighting. Vampires.”

Tyler blinks twice, like he heard the words but his brain refuses to process the information. 

“The uh, the rest have one person each. They’re all full.” That explains why they haven’t had any new ‘auditions,’ why Jagr hasn’t changed anyone since Hilary.

“There’s a room with a chair. Like this big wooden thing with straps. There were some closed doors, and a medical room, I guess. A bunch of cabinets and lights. One metal table, like a morgue, and a padded table, with the feet-things.” 

Jamie frowns, trying to think what Tyler means.

“Like—for lady stuff, you know?”

It takes Jamie a second, and then he looks across the corridor and Taylor is watching, listening, eyes bright and furious. For once he’s glad of the fencing between them. She looks like she wants to tear Tyler’s throat out right now, for talking about it, and Jamie’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stop her.

“Oh,” Tyler says, wincing. “Oh shit. I…”

Jagr starts laughing, a low chuckle that turns high and strained. 

“I wouldn’t have told,” Tyler says, going as close to the wire as he dares, “I wouldn’t have told your business if I knew what it meant.” 

“Taylor,” Jamie asks, trying to sound soft, supportive. “Taylor, what did they do to you?”

“You can’t smell?” Jagr asks. “Life in this pile of shit? Sweet little cub?”

“No,” Taylor growls, angry. Determined. “My brother—”

Jagr’s snort cuts her off. “If he coming, he be here already. Maybe he already try and they kill him to pieces.”

“You shut your fucking mouth!” Taylor cuts back, sprouting fur and snapping her jaws in his direction. 

A detail of guards comes down the hall and she shrinks back against the wall, to where Jamie can see she’s shredded her mattress since he last looked. She cowers down in the nest, growling, but the guards ignore her. Stop in front of Jamie’s cell instead.

“Him first,” one says, pointing at Tyler. Jamie struggles to his feet, leans on the wall behind him for support. Tyler looks over his shoulder at Jamie, and Jamie shrugs. There’s nothing they can do to resist, so why not trust in Tyler’s newly demonstrated value to keep him safe?

Tyler steps to the gate, his steps dragging and hesitant as they guide him out. They head arena-wards and Jamie’s stomach sinks. “Wait. Wait!”

Jagr laughs. “Awww. Pretty boy’s first fight.”

Jamie limps to the wire, tries to get a glimpse of Tyler’s retreating back but they’ve already gone through the door and there’s nothing to see but empty hall.

He’s still looking when the detail returns, when they stand at his door, when they say “Okay, now you.”


	10. whispers

They come for Jamie not long after they take Tyler, not long at all. Bind him the same way they do when he’s healthy, when he’s not injured, naked, and struggling to put one foot in front of the other. They bring him to the arena and put him into one of the holding cages. He looks across the fighting floor and there in the other is Tyler, looking scared, rubbing the palms of his hands on his hips like they’re sweaty.

“No,” Jamie says, feeling sick, feeling lost. There was an unspoken pact, he thought. That he would do what they said now, and they’d keep Tyler safe. “No, no…”

“Settle down,” a guard says. “Stay here.” 

Both cage doors click and swing open, nothing separating Jamie and Tyler.

“You! Get over here.” 

Tyler hesitates for just a second, and then jogs across the open space, joins Jamie in the smaller box.

The gates swing shut. Tyler shivers with nerves. 

“Strip.” That order is just for Tyler. Jamie glances at him, looks to see if Tyler thinks this is worth fighting over. Apparently he doesn’t, because he’s already got his blood-stiff shirt off.

One of the guards uncoils a hose from its rack on the wall, and Jamie braces himself against the coming unpleasantness. The spray is as shockingly cool as Jamie expected, sharp against his tender skin. They get jet-washed all over, turning when told. Tyler peels the rest of the medical patches off, and then Jamie gets sprayed again. They’re both shivering when it’s done, and the gates to the arena click open again.

“There. Both of you,” they’re ordered, and cross together to the dry cell. There are clothes there now, gray sweatpants and a t-shirt for Tyler, some sort of military-green pants with a lot of pockets and a black shirt for Jamie. There’s also a set of hair clippers. 

“Trim him up,” the guard tells Tyler, and Tyler sputters for a second.

“What? Just because—” he cuts himself off, mouth snapping shut. It’s Tyler looking to Jamie for permission this time, looking to see if this is a stand-and-fight moment. Jamie lowers himself to his knees, makes it easier for Tyler to reach. It actually feels good, when Tyler lowers Jamie’s head down, chin to his chest. When he runs his fingers up through the hair at the back of Jamie’s neck, lifting it before he guides the clippers through. The weight of hair lifts away with Tyler’s hand, dark clumps of oily matted strands falling down around them. 

Jamie watches the hair pile up on the ground, thinks of the months, counted in full moons and the length of the strands falling to the cement. Jordie has to be losing his mind. 

The clippers snag and Jamie winces. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Tyler mutters but it feels too good to get that mess gone. 

“It’s okay, keep going.”

Tyler gets the back, from the nape of Jamie’s neck up to the back of his skull, and then he tips Jamie’s head back, runs the clippers from forehead and temple back. Jamie’s eyes flicker open, and he watches Tyler’s, the calm look of concentration on his face. He dials the trimmers as short as they go and makes a pass over Jamie’s beard, careful so careful as he buzzes off the mustache. 

“I think that’s the best I can do,” Tyler says eventually. Jamie runs his hand over the long stubble that’s left on his head. It feels fairly even. 

“Want me to do you now?” 

Tyler hesitates and then shakes his head. “I think the battery is going.” He puts the trimmers down and offers Jamie a hand up. The guards are watching them carefully, but don’t initiate another transfer. Eventually Jamie sits back down. They’re there for a long time. Hours. Jamie has plenty of time to process the room. Of all the locations he’s been to, this is the least secure, the cage not protected by a screen of electricity. He wonders, how fast he could tear through the fence, if he could possibly get through it, kill the guards and get away before they shot him down. He’s too weak to try, but if he was healthy, if Tyler wasn’t here, if whoever he was supposed to be fighting would fucking help him…

There’s some unspoken signal, and the guards move again. The doors open to the arena.

“Him, over here.” Tyler goes where they signal him to, leaving Jamie alone in one holding cell while he goes to the other. They take Tyler out, back towards the cell block, and Jamie has to trust, when they come for him, that they’re taking him to Tyler. 

The cell smells like bleach when he gets there, Tyler standing off to the side so the guards can get Jamie in without getting twitchy. There’s a new mattress, leaning against the wall, and the floors have been scrubbed down. Their supply of protein powder and the mixing bottles are neatly stacked in a corner, the night’s fast-food bags next to them. The electric grid has been replaced, heavier wire and an audible hum that he thinks will either fade to background noise or drive him crazy in the next day. Somehow Jamie doesn’t think he’ll get through it again without getting knocked out, maybe killed, no matter how pissed he is. Shit.

“Home sweet home,” Tyler mutters. “Wish I’d known earlier about maid service. I’d have left a tip on the pillows.”

Jamie snorts. It’s been so long that he’d forgotten pillows, forgotten softness and comfort. Forgotten jokes.

They let the floor dry some more, and then pull the mattress down. It’s not new, but the stains are mild, and only on one side, so they turn those to the floor. “You can flip it over,” Jamie says. “When I come back from a fight, you can turn it to the dirty side, so we keep the other clean for longer.”

“That’s not fucking funny,” Tyler grumbles, and Jamie falters, because he hadn’t been trying for humor. 

“Why don’t you sleep first?” Jamie asks. Tyler really does look like shit, and maybe he’ll be less pissy after a nap. 

Tyler sighs but doesn’t argue. Lays down and closes his eyes. Jamie sits with his back to the wall, trying not to look into Taylor’s cell. He’s not sure if Jagr was right, about the smell of pregnancy, or if he’s imagining it. 

“Taylor,” he whispers, and she stirs. “Look. Your baby. I’ll do…something. You won’t have to have it here.”

“No shit, I won’t,” she says back. He doesn’t think she believes him. She sounds very definite, like she has a contingency plan. Jamie needs to come up with something before she implements it.

Tyler huffs and rolls over again, and Jamie turns back to the only person in this place that’s not openly hostile to him right now, just grumpy.

“Look,” Tyler says, and Jamie goes over to check on him. “This is gonna sound hella gay, but I got used to sleeping with my hand on you. To know if you were still breathing.”

Jamie’s lips twitch, but he won’t laugh at Tyler.

“So…?” Jamie trails off, giving Tyler room to say what he needs. 

“So will you fucking get down here and let me feel you breathe?” 

Jamie shuffles over and stretches out. Tyler hesitates, like Jamie will bite if he does it wrong, and then his hand reaches out, rests on Jamie’s stomach just under his rib cage. Jamie tries to breathe slow and steady, but Tyler doesn’t drop off to sleep immediately like he half-expected. 

Jamie licks his lower lip, debates with himself if he should tell Tyler. Finally he opens his mouth. “The uh, ‘hella gay’ thing. That’s not something you gotta worry about.”

Tyler freezes. “What?”

“It’s okay?” Jamie says, hating that it sounds like a question. “I am too?”

“What?” Tyler asks again, an edge to it that Jamie doesn’t think sounds good. “How did you?”

Jamie rubs over his shorn head with the hand not trapped between their bodies. “I could uh, smell. That first day when they brought you. The uh. What you’d done before that.” Tyler’s chill makes him begin to doubt himself. “Unless I got it wrong?” 

“No. I did. I am. I just. Didn’t want to end up some scary guy’s prison bitch.”

Jamie nods. Wishes it was dark for this conversation. He misses nighttime almost as much as he misses the sun. “That’s fair,” Jamie says, shrugs. “I didn’t tell you I was a fucking werewolf, so.”

Tyler snorts, and lays his head down again. Shifts his hand on Jamie’s stomach a little to get more comfortable. It feels different than it had just a minute ago, somehow. More intimate. Like a sign of trust between them. 

“This…I’ve got to get us out of here,” Jamie sighs, quiet. “I gotta get you out of here.”

He looks over when there’s no reply, and Tyler’s eyes are closed, his lips parted, his breathing slow and steady with sleep. Okay, Jamie thinks, okay.

=============

Tyler wakes with his head pillowed on Jamie’s chest, his arm wrapped tight around Jamie’s waist, legs stretched out together. He knows, knows that if you lock two people in a cage full of stress that they’re either gonna kill each other or fuck, eventually. He knows it isn’t real. The problem is, he needs it too bad, the human contact. Someone to hold, to count on. Jamie says he’s gay, and that kind of blows Tyler’s mind. Somehow it’s easier to accept the werewolf thing. 

Jamie makes a sleepy murmur and his arm tightens around Tyler’s shoulders. Tyler should get up, push away before Jamie realizes they were cuddling. Any moment. He’ll pull back. Get up and make a protein shake or something. 

The shake makes him think of the straw, sliding it between Jamie’s lax lips. It hadn’t been sexy at the time, Tyler scared shitless that Jamie would die. Scared that Jamie would die and _leave him_ here. But now he’s thinking of Jamie sucking the water off of his fingers, Jamie kneeling so Tyler could cut his hair. Sensations divorced from context and he’s starting to feel the first stir of arousal since he was snatched off the street. He had started to worry that his dick was broken, being here, and even the vague _want_ he feels is a relief. 

Jamie’s arm twitches again, and then he takes a long breath in through his nose, his whole body going tense under Tyler’s. Tyler jerks away, pretends he hadn’t just been cuddling, hadn’t been so fucking needy. His dad had spent years breaking Tyler of the habit of clinging, of needing people. He turns, angles his body away, but it would feel too much like running to leave the mattress.

“Um,” Jamie says to Tyler’s shoulder, sits up and doesn’t reach out. 

“It’s good, I’m good,” Tyler says, knowing he’s not making a lot of sense. 

“You know I wouldn’t…the thing you were worried about.”

Tyler nods and rubs his hands over his face. He feels like he got good sleep, more focused and rested than he has been for days. He just needs a little space, and there is no space. “Who’s Jordie?” he asks, to take Jamie’s focus off of him. “Boyfriend?”

Jamie frowns, and Tyler thinks he might have made a mistake. “What? Ew, no. He’s my big brother. How’d you know about Jordie?”

Tyler shrugs. “You asked for him. When you were hurting.”

“He was always the one,” Jamie said, voice going soft, open and a little sad. “Our parents worked, a lot, so when I was sick, or hurt, or anything, it was usually Jordie first, taking care of me.”

Tyler lets his shoulders relax, closes his eyes, listens to Jamie talk, about the brother who isn’t here, the brother who always made him feel safe. Not his brother, not his life, but he takes comfort in the stories, a sweet fantasy to wrap himself up in. 

=============

They give Jamie another full day to recover, and then bring him to the arena. He doesn’t fight them, moves as obediently to their directions as he’s able. “Flip the mattress,” he reminds Tyler as they slip the nooses over his neck. 

The guards yank him around and Jamie lets them. He won’t give them any reason to hurt Tyler. Not unless doing so gives them some hope of getting out. He expects an opponent, maybe multiples again. Instead, there’s a treadmill in the middle of the space. 

Jamie suppresses a groan. He’s not a big fan of leg day, and even less of running. They keep him held, and the guard who must have drawn the short straw comes up to him and lifts Jamie’s shirt, sticking remote heart-monitors to his sternum and ribs. Jamie wants to snap and snarl, to see the man flinch back. He stares at the ceiling instead, ignores the clinical touches until they’re over. 

They put him into the outer cell, lock the door and then the inner door opens. Jamie knows what he’s supposed to do, goes over to the treadmill and steps on. The control panel is black, but the belt starts to move under his feet. He takes a deep breath. Running is better than fighting, he tells himself. If running keeps Tyler safe, then he’ll run. 

=============

They take Jamie, and Tyler stands helpless in their cell. Stands by the gate, watching to see who they bring to fight him, who is going to hurt him, but the guards don’t come back, don’t take anyone else. He flips the mattress anyway, because Jamie asked him to, because it’s such a little thing. 

And then he waits, hours. Lunch comes and Tyler eats his half, leaves Jamie’s wrapped up for when he’s back. Jagr murmurs sweetly about what they could be doing to Jamie, that they could be dissecting him alive, and he’d let them. That they could be taking turns fucking him now that his fangs have been pulled. Now that Tyler has made him weak. 

They bring Jamie back, and for a heart-stopping second, Tyler thinks maybe Jagr was right. There’s not a mark on him, not a bruise or cut, but Jamie stumbles from exhaustion, flushed and breathing hard. He’s in different clothes, and it looks like they hosed him down after whatever it was.

“Shit,” Tyler mumbles and the guards don’t stop him from catching Jamie when they drop him. He half-carries him over to the mattress and eases him down. 

“I’m okay,” Jamie says, groaning at the sudden luxury of being horizontal, legs kicking out without any strength. Tyler…he was wrong about Jamie being unhurt. The soles of his feet are blistered and torn; he left faint bloody tracks across their floor. Tyler does what he can, gets him a shake and a bottle of water and the overheated flush fades from Jamie’s skin. Washes his feet with a trickle of water when the guards turn it on, but by then he’s already healed.

Later, when they’re laying together, Tyler’s fingers resting where he can feel Jamie breathe, he leans in close, whispers so quiet he can barely even hear himself, “They leave the electric fence turned off when you aren’t here.”

Jamie goes very still; the steady rise and fall of his breath stops for a second. Tyler tips his head so he can see Jamie’s face, and his eyes are bright, intense. 

“That’s something,” Jamie says, “Finally. That’s something.”


	11. shitty is the new normal

They take Jamie out the next day and the next. Back to the treadmill, back to being a lab rat. They put him through workouts that would kill a human, that leave him aching so bad he thinks he might be breaking bones and healing them again while he’s running.

The fourth day they bring him, they leave him in the outer cell for a longer time, and a second detail comes in with Tyler. They put him in the other small cage, pull out handcuffs and snap them around his wrist, shackling his arms over his head against the wire. 

“I’m okay,” Tyler says, even though Jamie can see how afraid he is, eyes too wide and jaw clenching against any expression of nerves. 

The door to the arena opens and Jamie goes to the treadmill again. He’s starting to hate this thing. Against another fighter, he can use strategy. Try different moves and see what works, what sticks. The treadmill only has two options. Run or not. Go until he falls or step off. Jamie clenches his jaw and steps on, feels the belt start to roll under his feet. 

They don’t give him much of a warm-up this time. He watches Tyler as the motor hums, but he has to focus on running as his footfalls come faster and faster. He hits his stride and the belt is whining, straining, and he thinks he’s topped it out. He glances up at Tyler, once, sees his fingers locked in the wire, holding on. The man behind him has a belt in his hands now; Jamie isn’t sure where it came from. 

Jamie runs, wondering how long he can keep this up, wondering what the heart rate monitor is telling them about him. 

And then the belt tilts, the front going up and the speed staying the same, a slow-rising incline that Jamie struggles to keep up with, gasping for air. His foot comes down wrong and it’s like getting thrown out of a moving car, the belt yanking his traction away, dragging him down to hit hard on the moving rubber. His upper body bounces off and then the momentum slams him to the cement behind him.

There’s a thwap, leather on cotton across Tyler’s shoulders. The sound he makes is more angry than pained, and Jamie pulls himself up. The treadmill is slower than it was when it threw him off, lower. Tyler takes a second blow and then Jamie is back on, pushing himself. He feels the start of a change, claws getting traction. They raise the incline again and he lets go, lets his body do what it needs to run, to keep up with the slope and the speed. Time warps in his head, and he loses himself in the run, in the wolf. 

He’s dripping with sweat when the machine slows, when the ramp comes down, when he comes back to his humanity. He looks across, and Tyler is staring at him, eyes wide, and Jamie wonders what he looked like. He wonders if Tyler is scared of him again. He ducks his head and steps off when the treadmill stops. They take Tyler out, but Jamie gets hosed down, new clothes to change into. 

His feet are tender as they bring him back, but healing better, faster this time, like his body has figured out what’s expected of it, what’s demanded. He focuses on the injuries, on the belt-burn on his left knee and elbow, feels that quicksilver flicker of change back and forth wiping the pain away. 

Tyler is standing up when they bring Jamie back, his eyes flicking over Jamie’s body like they might have hurt him since they last saw each other. 

“You good?” Tyler asks, and Jamie nods as they leave him in the cell. 

“Yeah, you?” 

Tyler nods, but there are lines of tension around his eyes, his mouth. 

“Your back?” Jamie asks, and Tyler makes an aggravated noise again. 

“What is it with these guys and my back?” he complains, and Jamie sits down, far enough away for Tyler to not feel crowded. 

“They want me to see your face,” Jamie says, and Tyler’s jaw clenches. 

_Can I see your back?_ Jamie wants to ask, wants to see how bad it is, what his failure to please cost Tyler. It seems too private though, when there’s no first-aid that needs to be given, when Tyler hasn’t offered.

Tyler sighs and comes over to sit by Jamie, elbows just touching, leaning against his own knees so his shoulders don’t touch the wall. 

“The wire was off again, when they brought me back. They didn’t turn it on until you were here. I spit on it, to check, and it didn’t crackle.”

Jamie looks across the cell, at the wall of cement blocks that separates his space from Jagr’s. 

“I tried to bend the outer wire, but it’s too strong. Even with the bottle cap on my thumb, I couldn’t get enough leverage.”

Jamie nods, trying to work it out. This is the best break, the most egregious breach of protocol the guards have made; he just can’t figure out how it will let them escape. 

“Talk me through it,” Tyler urges. “Tell me all the parts you know. Tell me from the beginning.”

Jamie takes a deep breath, organizes his thoughts. Feels them slot together slightly different as he plans to tell someone else. 

“The guards are military, or ex-military. High-end mercenaries, maybe. I’ve seen twelve different faces. They’re well trained, well disciplined. Before you came, I made a break. I killed one of them. They didn’t break regulations for revenge. They haven’t come back to punish Taylor for the one she killed. They move the fighters with a detail of no less than five. They never leave a fighter in the arena with less than two armed men. So that leaves a max of five more of them unaccounted for when there’s a match. They have to sleep sometime. I’m not sure if they’re barracking on-site or leaving.”

Tyler nods along, letting Jamie get the words out. Taylor watches from across the hall. Jagr is silent on the other side of the wall, surely listening, but keeping his mouth shut for once.

“They communicate with ear-pieces, although they don’t say much around the prisoners. There has to be a camera on the hall, maybe both ends. Letting the gate-keepers know when to open the magnetic locks, when to turn on the electric fencing. Probably no cameras on the individual cells, if they brought in a hand-held to document my condition. If that was more an issue of resolution or angle, if there are cameras on the cells, they’ll leave the wire on next time you’re alone.”

He looks up, through the mesh at the front of their cell at the strip of fluorescent lighting. “The power is run in conduit over the cement ceiling. Which means there is no crawl-space, no over-head exit. But also the power is vulnerable. If we had something insulated, if we could get you through the gate while the fence is off, you might be able to bring enough of it down to let the fighters out.” He points to where individual flex-pipe goes from behind the light fixture to his gate, to Taylor’s. “Each door has to be on a separate circuit, someone in a control room turning it on and off. Maybe something as simple as a breaker box.”

“The gate is secure, when you’re gone,” Tyler reminds him, and Jamie nods. 

“And the last five guards are too much of a threat,” Jamie agrees. 

Tyler’s eyes trace the power grid over their cell, the delicate-looking lines of it. “You know anything about wiring? Maybe we could mess it up while it’s off, make it short-circuit or something?” 

Jamie shakes his head. “That’s more Jordie’s thing than mine. And even if we could, they’d know when they turned it back on. I’d have a detail of five right there, and they’d cut me down.” 

Tyler flinches, and Jamie nudges his elbow. 

“We’ll figure it out,” he promises. In his head he’s narrowing the success parameters. If the goal wasn’t getting them all out, if the goal was just Tyler, and Taylor…he still can’t make it work, can’t align all the elements. If he could keep the seven guarding the fight occupied, keep them there…but no, he’d still be sending the two softest targets against five skilled, trained, armed men. 

Tyler leans in against him, tips his head onto Jamie’s shoulder, letting Jamie take his weight, some of his worries. 

==========


	12. Full moon

The next time they come for Jamie they leave Tyler where he is. Tyler loiters at the edge of the cage, staying a few inches back even though he can’t feel the near-subliminal hum of the wire. He waits, watches, and they come back, take someone from further down, someone he can’t get an angle to see. He can hear though, “What the fuck is the fucking point?” and a scrabble of resistance, but it doesn’t make any difference. There must be a second way into the arena because they don’t come past Jamie’s cage.

“Shaw,” Jagr says, conversational, and for once he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to start shit.

“Huh?” Tyler asks, thrown by it for a second. “Is he good? Can Jamie beat him?”

Jagr snorts. “I never shoulda bit that guy.”

Tyler puts his back to the wall he shares with Jagr, slides down to sit on his heels. He tries to listen, but no sound of the fight comes through the thick cement. Maybe the werewolves can hear it. He doesn’t know.

“Bit Shaw?”

“Fuckin’ Benn,” Jagr grumbles, but there’s something in it, some barely-hidden admiration. “Now, later, everybody fight everybody. Maybe they let me put it off because I always go easy, but they make me fight him sometime. Nobody else can take him.”

“And you think he’ll win,” Tyler supplies, and he feels a strange surge of pride at that, that his Jamie is the baddest boyfriend on the block. Or something. 

Jagr laughs. “I think he’s younger. Stronger. Faster. But old wolves have many tricks.”

“Yeah?” Tyler asks, just to keep him talking, just for the chance that Jagr says something useful now that Tyler’s caught him in a cooperative mood. He tries to figure what it means, that Jagr shouldn’t have bitten Jamie, but that they’ve never fought before. If biting isn’t fighting, what the hell does that mean?

Jagr makes a speculative hmmm. “You looking to trade up? You want me to kill him for you? I never fucked boys before but it is a long damn time I been here. You’d be safer with me. Those assholes would think hurt you don’t matter, so no reason. Maybe they stop.”

“If you fucking…” Tyler’s not sure what he can do, but allowing Jamie’s killer to touch him is not something he’ll do willingly. He might not win, but he’ll sure as hell fight.

Jagr snickers. “Oh fuck, you funny. Because of him they take you. Fuck you up. Burn you. Beat you.”

“Jamie didn’t do any of that. He didn’t volunteer for this shit. He didn’t ask for me. This isn’t on him.”

Jagr hums again. The doors open and someone is coming.

“Shaw coming back,” Jagr supplies, “he didn’t win. They taking Hils now. Benn fights hard for you. More hard than he should.”

Tyler stands up and circles the small room, rubs his hands nervously on his thighs. He thinks about Jamie fighting, Jamie bleeding. Wonders if he’ll make it last as long as they want it to, or if Tyler’s getting burned again today. His stomach clenches at the thought of it, all of it. He goes to the bucket and retches, but nothing comes up. 

Tyler checks the mattress again, even though he knows he flipped it.

==========

They bring Jamie back to the cell, the nooses around his neck pulled cuttingly tight, the gunmen with their fingers on the triggers. After what he just did, he can’t call it overreaction, can’t blame them even as he tries to swallow around the rope. 

He’s moving under his own power at least, bruised and bloodied, long slashes crossing his chest from shoulder to ribs, matching furrows cut into his back, his shirt and skin both gaping open, wet and slick. His vision is starting to go gray around the edges, but as soon as the angle lets him see into the cell he’s looking for Tyler, for him to be there, for him to be unhurt. He stumbles with relief to see him, Tyler stepping forward, his own eyes looking over Jamie like he’s cataloging the injuries. 

The guards shove him inside and Tyler reaches out, there if Jamie falls, and Jamie is bloody from claws to elbows, from nose to throat. Jamie is dangerous and unsettled and he jerks back before Tyler can touch him. 

He can see the wary hurt on Tyler’s face as he holds his hands up, annoyance too, like trying to keep him safe is an insult. Tyler steps back, gives him space to get to the water bottles and clean himself up. 

“Shit,” Tyler breathes, reaches out but Jamie twitches away from his touch. 

“Don’t…Don’t.” His jaw clenches, shoulders held so tight it aches.

Tyler sucks his lower lip between his teeth and holds it there. Takes three deep breaths and waits. He is so fucking human, so fragile, and Jamie sees red when he closes his eyes, things done in the arena that he can’t stop his mind from returning to.

“The full moon is close,” Jamie says, eyes still on the wall. It’s not the first he’s had here, but the first with Tyler locked in with him. He reaches behind his head and pulls the bloodied, shredded shirt off. “I just. I just fucking spilled someone’s intestines over the fucking floor, and, and I...” 

Jamie’s breath hitches and he rubs his face against the crumpled cloth. It reeks of blood, mostly his own, and he tries to wipe his face, tries to scent it so deep he can’t smell anything else.

A murmur goes down the row of cells, the prisoners asking down the line, if one of them is dead, if a fight has gone further than a werewolf can heal.

“Nice moves, asshole,” Hilary calls, her voice pained but stubbornly chipper. “I’ll getcha back for that next time.”

“She’s okay,” Taylor assures Jamie, coming from her nest to the edge of her cell. “They stapled her shut. The moon’s coming. She’ll heal.”

“He won’t,” Jamie tells her, talking about Tyler like he’s not there, not a person. He paces the cell, trapped, avoiding. If he doesn’t look at Tyler, doesn’t think about Tyler…

“You gonna eat him up?” Jagr taunts. “Your sweet boy, get him between your back teeth.”

Jamie snarls. He can _feel_ Tyler’s gaze on the back of his neck, and it’s no good; his control is in tatters. He wants to crowd Tyler into the corner, to rub his face on Tyler’s skin until they smell like one person, wants to savage anybody who would come near them. 

“Jamie,” Taylor calls, getting his attention. “Jamie, this isn’t your first moon.”

It isn’t. The others hadn’t been so bad. He’d wanted to run, to hunt, to be the fuck out of this place. He’d howled with the others, trapped and sorrowful, but he hadn’t hit the wire, hadn’t lost his mind. He takes a shuddering breath. Hilary’s blood is drying on the hairs of his arm, tacky and thick.

“You won’t hurt him,” Taylor says, sure. 

“Jamie,” Tyler says, soft and low. Jamie braces himself for Tyler’s touch but doesn’t flinch away, lets Tyler put a hand on his elbow and lead him back to the mattress. 

“You gonna hurt me?” Tyler asks. It seems to be an actual question, but he doesn’t seem scared.

“No.” Jamie might weird him out, might act like a freak. He might show the wolf to Tyler, be naked and horrible and contemptible. Tyler might not be able to see Jamie and think of him as a person again, but in his heart, Jamie knows he won’t hurt him. 

“This might be weird,” Jamie adds, and Tyler snorts. His hands are cool on Jamie’s torn back. 

“I’m holding your skin together while you heal,” Tyler reminds him. They left normal behind a long time ago.

Tyler helps clean him up when his wounds are closed. The food doesn’t come, but the guards do their usual full-moon double-patrols. Jamie pushes the bed against the back wall, tired from the fight, from this fucking prison. 

“Please,” he asks Tyler, nodding at the space he’s left between himself and the wall, the safest spot he can protect. He wants Tyler there, wants him close and sheltered. 

“Sure,” Tyler says, like he’s doing a favor he doesn’t mind. They haven’t pressed so close while both of them are awake before. Jamie crowds him in, wraps him in his arms, and Tyler lets him, curls in and breathes against Jamie’s collarbone. 

They rest together, wait for the moon to rise.

Jamie closes his eyes, feeling the change tickling along his skin, through his bones. He pushes it back, focuses on Tyler’s warmth. 

Jagr’s voice is the first to rise, lost whines rising to mournful howls. Shaw joins him, and a back-and-forth song that Jamie thinks might be the twins. Jamie fights the shift, but he can feel the pull of the moon, making it harder and harder to remember why it could be so important. 

“You won’t hurt me,” Tyler reminds him, and he realizes his body is stiff, tense. He rubs his cheek against Tyler’s hair one last time and draws away. He turns, something like modesty not wanting to see Tyler’s face while he does this, while he changes without panic or rage for the first time. He adds his howl to the packsong, deep and sorrowful. Taylor’s voice wraps around his, calling, searching for kin that are lost to her. 

Jamie longs too, and he looks over his shoulder then, into Tyler’s wide eyes. He can smell the fear on him, can hear his thundering heart, his short tight breaths. Jamie lowers his head, slinks low to the ground, needing to be closer, needing to take this stink off of his…his Tyler.

Jamie pushes his muzzle into Tyler’s hand and the tension breaks. Tyler laughs, ragged and shaky, and Jamie nuzzles him, shoving against his chest, turning to rub his shoulder against Tyler so hard it almost knocks him over. 

“Yeah, okay. Fuck,” Tyler says. He reaches out, hesitant, and pets the hair along Jamie’s jawline. “Okay.”


	13. Desperate times

The guards don’t leave Tyler in the cell every time they take Jamie out. If they’re running Jamie on the treadmill, or seeing how many push-ups he can do, or how long he can hold his head over the chin-up bar, they take him and then come back for Tyler. Tyler can never know if it’s a fight or a workout until the opponent is also taken to the arena. When they do, when Tyler is sure they’re not coming back for him, he tries to figure out the cage, tries to follow the wires and see if he can disable part of it, like a section of Christmas lights that won’t work because one bulb is out. He messes with the lock, now that he can touch it, get his hand around it, but there’s no way to click it open from inside the cell. At most, there’s maybe ten minutes between guards taking people or bringing people back. 

“Hssst!” Taylor warns from across the hall and he jerks back, withdraws to the back of the cell. 

==============

There’s a pattern to the times they take Jamie to fight. He’s not always the first brought out, but the loser is brought back first, and then they take Tyler out to the cell with the chair (if Jamie failed somehow, if he didn’t fight long enough, didn’t make it pretty enough, broke some arbitrary rule like ‘do it without shifting’). If they take Tyler after a fight, he knows it’s gonna hurt, knows they’re gonna burn him or hit him. They’ll move Jamie back to the cell, turn on the wire and then hurt Tyler in front of the cell. It’s not every time, but enough that there’s always a mark on him somewhere, always a half-healed burn or green bruise. An ache or an itch, no way to forget where he is, even for a minute.

It’s maybe twenty days after the full moon, five fights later if Tyler is counting it that way, that they take Dillon to the arena, and then the Medusa, Shannon. Whispers go down the line of prisoners, and then the guards come for Jamie. 

“Shit,” Tyler breathes, because he hates it when Jamie fights either of those guys. Dillon is raw brute strength, and Jamie has come back with broken bones, black bruises. Shannon has the snake venom, the burn of it dissolving Jamie’s flesh as fast as his body can regenerate it for hours after a fight with her. 

“It’s okay,” Jamie tells Tyler as he lets them bind him, lets them take him out of the relative safety of their cell. 

Tyler watches until Jamie is out of sight and then he tries again to bend the loops that hold the chain link to the frame that makes up the cell-front. He’s not quite sure what he’d do if he got out of the cell while Jamie was gone, but it feels like it would be progress if he could weaken their cage.

He’s barely started worrying at the metal when the doors to the arena open again, guards bringing Shannon back to her cell, out again to bring Dillon back. They both look okay— a little banged up, but not like they just fought Jamie, and Tyler’s guts twist up with trepidation. 

Tyler tosses the bottle cap he was using on the fence behind him, stands and waits as a pair of guards come for him, tense and brusque. He can’t help struggling, can’t put away the fear of the inevitable pain that’s coming. He gets smacked for his trouble, the hard heavy hand of the guard catching him across the cheek and ear and sending him sprawling. They pick him up and drag him out. A few of the prisoners meet his eyes as they go past—Shaw radiating defiance and Jagr looking him over speculatively, one of the twins sharing a split-second of sympathy. Shannon looks down, and Dillon shakes his head and Tyler is terrified that Jamie is dead, hurt beyond what even he can heal. 

The guards turn the corner, take him down to the chair-room, throw him inside and shut the door. He can hear Jamie then, shouting. “I didn’t throw it! I didn’t lose on purpose! Tyler!” 

He can’t hear what the guards do to him, but he can imagine it in the sudden silence. Lost, oh fuck. Jamie has never lost before, and Tyler doesn’t know what that means, for Jamie or for him. 

He cowers back into the corner when they come for him. One of the guards grabs his hair and cracks his head against the cement wall and he’s too worried about the blood in his face to fight them as they bring him back to the cells. 

“Jagr,” Jamie is saying, “Don’t. Don’t you dare fucking hurt him. Don’t.” Half warning and half-pleading. Tyler struggles anew, throwing his weight down, trying to slither out of their grip. Jamie thinks they’re giving him to Jagr, and he tries to prepare himself for that, wondering if he can hurt Jagr enough that Jagr will be more interested in kicking his ass than fucking it, wondering if that’s even the smartest move, the least-awful of his possible outcomes.

One guard gets a hold of Tyler’s hair, the other twists his arm until he cries out. They drag him the rest of the way down. They linger in front of Jagr’s cell, and Jagr stands there glaring at the guards, jaw clenched and shaking his head until they drag Tyler past. Tyler can see Jamie then, half his face swollen and unrecognizable, a plum-sized pit in his left cheek where Shannon’s snakes got a strike in, inches from his eye. He’s pacing back and forth, half wolfed-out, slavering and furious, terrified. There are four men with guns in front of the cell, pointed at Jamie, and he might not get so lucky this time, might get hit somewhere he can’t heal from, especially with so much of his immune system fighting the poison. 

“I’m okay,” Tyler calls over his inner monologue of fuck fuck fuck. He dares to look over and Jagr is pacing too, scowling at Tyler, at the guards. 

There must be a signal Tyler can’t see, because suddenly the guards are moving again, dragging him right in front of Jamie’s cell. 

“Jamie,” Tyler says, trying to put everything that he is, everything he feels in that one word. That this isn’t Jamie’s fault. That he’d forgive him even if it was. That he’s sorry for being here, sorry that hurting him can hurt Jamie. 

The guard holding his hair tightens his fist and pulls back, tipping Tyler’s head back. He tries to get his hand up when the guard who had been holding it lets go suddenly. He doesn’t see the fist that’s coming towards his face, the shock of it so sudden it almost feels like cold instead of impact. Two more hits follow it, hard punches to each side of his face. The man holding him lets go and he crumples, hears Jamie howl as he disappears under a flurry of kicks. A boot crunches down on his hand and he screams, ribs protesting, breath coming hard and shallow. 

“Enough!” one of the guards calls, and they back away from him, leave him curled up and trying to protect himself. 

“Back!” another orders; it must be to Jamie. Tyler doesn’t know if the follow-up shot is a warning or if Jamie is hit. He can’t lift his head, can’t move his hand. 

“Move,” a guard says, and he’s sure this is to him. A kick to his thigh punctuates the order, and Tyler can’t walk so he crawls over the threshold and into the cell, his broken hand curled against his chest. There are fresh spatters of blood on the cement under him, but he couldn’t say if they were from Jamie’s injuries or his own wounds. 

The door clangs shut and suddenly Jamie is there, hands brushing over Tyler’s shoulders like he isn’t sure where he can touch. Tyler can hear himself, his pained gasps and whimpers. He doesn’t have to crawl any further so he lets himself collapse, lets Jamie catch him. He knows he’s shaking, knows he’s safe now, but he can’t turn off the fear, so close, so fucking close; they could have killed him, could have given him to Jagr, could have fucked him, could have killed Jamie.

“It’s okay; you’re okay,” Jamie says, an echo of their first days together. He forces his body back into human shape with a visible effort. Tyler laughs, and cries, writhes against the pain in his ribs. 

“Oh Jesus,” Jamie breathes. He pushes the mattress over closer, apologizes as he lifts Tyler onto it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says as he starts at Tyler’s head and examines his injuries, firm touches feeling for who-the-fuck knows what. 

“Stop,” Tyler whimpers, “Just stop.”

“You might have a concussion,” Jamie explains, “You might have internal bleeding, broken bones…”

“Nothin’ you can do if I do,” Tyler gasps back, and talking hurts, breathing hurts. 

Jamie makes a profoundly sad noise but he quits with the painful touches. “Is this okay? How you’re laying? Would it be easier on your side?” 

And that is something that makes sense, so Tyler nods, lets Jamie help him roll over, curls up in a fetal position. 

“I’m sorry,” Jamie says, “I am so fucking sorry. She. She got behind me. The snake caught me in the face, seconds into the match. Dillon got a good hold of me while I was distracted and there was nothing I could do.”

“Not your fault,” Tyler whispers. He feels like he’s sinking. The other prisoners are talking, but he can’t hear what they’re saying. A quiet little corner of his mind wonders if it wouldn’t be easier, if they’ve killed him, if he can just give up and leave Jamie the dignity of fighting against them until they kill him too.

================

Tyler slips into unconsciousness and Jamie can’t help the high distressed whines that come from his throat. He shifts again, lays himself down where he can rest the tip of his nose against the back of Tyler’s neck. He smells of blood and pain, and Jamie counts every breath, licks the salt from his skin. 

“He’s strong,” Jagr tells him, and Jamie growls. He can’t figure out why they didn’t carry through on the threat, didn’t give Tyler to Jagr for the night. 

His face burns, aches, hurts more than he’d thought an injury could. The left eye is still blind, and he’s worried that the vision won’t return. That he’ll lose more often now, that Tyler will be hurt more often. 

He sits a silent vigil, waiting for Tyler to wake up, to need something. 

Dinner has been served, and the following breakfast before Tyler stirs, pain flickering across his face before he’s even awake, his shallow breath catching in his chest in a harsh gasp. 

“Shh shh shh,” Jamie soothes, hand on Tyler’s shoulder. He has a bottle of water at the ready, dampens Tyler’s lips when his tongue licks over them. 

“Fuck,” Tyler groans, and Jamie feels a wave of relief. 

“Don’t move,” he says, and Tyler goes lax again, silent and still but not asleep, not unconscious. 

“Painkillers,” Jamie says to the lunch-deliverers. “What do I need to do to get him painkillers?” 

They ignore him like they can’t even hear him. The armed guard points a weapon at him. Jamie backs up from the bars, unwilling to have bullets flying when Tyler’s in the field of fire. 

Tyler doesn’t respond when Jamie offers the best morsels of lunch, doesn’t want the hamburger patty or the easier-to-eat ketchup-soaked bun. He drinks some water, probably twenty-four hours after his beating. Jamie helps him up when he needs to go to the bucket. He can see and smell the blood in Tyler’s piss. Hopes it’s just bruising to the kidneys, that nothing has been ruptured that won’t heal on its own. 

“They’re gonna kill us all,” Tyler murmurs when Jamie lays him down again. He moves his body in against Tyler’s, pillows Tyler’s head on his shoulder. 

“No,” Jamie says, “I won’t let that happen. I won’t let them…” Even he knows the promise is an empty one. 

“You should bite me,” Tyler says, like it’s clear to him, obvious. Like there’s no risk, no consequences. 

Jamie’s full-body flinch draws a gasp out of Tyler, and Jamie goes still again, trying not to move. 

“I’m not gonna bite you,” he says. His back is to Taylor, but he can’t hear anything from her or Jagr. 

He holds Tyler until his breath evens out again, slips carefully out from under him.

Taylor is watching when he turns, her green eyes thoughtful. 

“What he said,” Jamie whispers, “Was that…could I?”

She shrugs, uncertain. “I don’t know. We don’t…it isn’t something my pack has done since I was little, bringing in a human and making them wolf. I don’t know the specifics.”

Jamie clenches his jaw. “Jagr?” 

“Now you want my words?” Jagr teases, and Jamie counts to ten before he can speak without snarling.

“You bit me and made me a wolf. Can I do that to Tyler? Can I change him?”

Jagr makes a frustrated noise. “For what fucking point? So they hurt him more without killin’ him? No. Better for him he breaks and dies. More kind.”

Jamie is quiet for long moments, playing with all the pieces, all the things he knows. He goes to Tyler, gently touches his arm above the broken fingers until he wakes up. 

“Huh?” Tyler asks, his gaze muddled with pain. 

“Your dad,” Jamie says, “You said he’s powerful, he’s got people. That he can make things happen. If you got out, got a message to him, could he help us?”

Tyler frowns. “Could? Yeah. Would? Not if I was already out. He’s got that fucking kidnapping insurance on me, where they send in special forces to get me back, but I don’t think he’d go to that much trouble for strangers.”

“Jamie,” Taylor murmurs, low and urgent. “Jamie, if he could get out, he could call my brother. Sid would come for me. With the war-party of our pack, he’d come for me.” 

“If he’s still alive,” Jagr adds. “If he didn’t try before and get dead. If he’s not cut to pieces in some lab.”

Taylor snarls at the idea. 

Tyler’s eyes are closed again when Jamie looks down at him.

“Jagr, how do I do this?” Jamie asks. He’s not sure if it’s better to do it now, with Tyler already hurt so bad that he’ll barely be able to register more pain, or if he should wait until he heals. “How do I make it more likely it takes?”

Jagr snorts. “You think I give you for free, the only thing they want from me?”

“What do you want?” Jamie asks. “I’ll do anything. Give you anything. If I change him and he lives, I’ll do whatever you want.”

Jagr scoffs. “If you have my secret, they have no reason to do me nice.”

“You’re gonna have to fight Jamie eventually,” Taylor cuts in. “You’re gonna have to fight him, and he’s gonna tear you to pieces. We’ll ask down the doors, ‘what tricks has Jagr used on you’ and you’ll have nothing left, and he’ll fucking kill you for letting Tyler be hurt, for taking away his chance.”

“You’ll get out too,” Jamie promises, “If Taylor’s brother comes, we’ll make sure he knows you helped us. You’ll see the moon again, the sun. You’ll be free.”

“After all the things I do you think I can live with myself out there?”

Jamie grits his teeth. 

“Then do this one fucking thing right, you fucking asshole.”

Jagr sighs. Jamie can hear him shuffling around in his cell, coming to sit as close as he can to the door. 

“It was never meant to be this,” Jagr says, soft and sad. “Was a gift of joy, of life and love. It takes a lot from the changed, but healthy, strong, nobody die of it. Here…I cannot say, if your boy live through it.”

“They’re gonna kill us all, eventually,” Jamie says. “I’ll talk to him, when he wakes up. Make sure he understands.”

Jagr is silent for long minutes. Jamie hears him swallow. “You fight me. In the arena, at the full moon. I talk to the guards, they want to see it. They’ll let us.” 

“Okay,” Jamie agrees.

“You fight me hard, Jamie Benn. If you win, you kill me, yeah? This is what I ask.”

Jamie chews on his lip. “Yeah. I’ll make it quick.”

“You gotta bite deep,” Jagr says. “Gotta get lotsa spit in there. Shoulder, thigh, make sure to miss the vein.” 

“Jagr…” Jamie starts, but he’s not sure what he wants to say.

“You kill him and it’s not my fault,” Jagr says. “But I figure you wanna kill me if that happens.”

Jamie clenches his jaw and goes back to Tyler, gently brushes the hair off of his forehead. Takes in his bruised and battered body. Another day. He’ll give Tyler one more day to heal, and then they’ll talk.


	14. Desperate Measures

Tyler wakes up hurting. In his head, he knows it’s only been a day, maybe a little more. It feels like forever, though. Like he can’t remember when he didn’t know pain. Can’t remember a time before this cell with any clarity.

He shifts his arm, trying to find a place to rest it that aggravates his ribs less. 

“Hey,” Jamie murmurs from behind him, and now that Tyler is paying attention, he can feel the light touch of Jamie’s body tucked against his back, close enough that he can feel Jamie’s warmth, careful enough that he’s not actually pressing into Tyler’s scrapes and bruises. 

“Hey,” Tyler answers back.

“How do you feel?”

“Like roadkill.” 

“Tyler,” Jamie says, like he’s psyching himself up for the next words. “Do you remember what you said? About me biting you?” 

Tyler goes still. It had seemed so clear at the time, injured-logic like drunk-logic, all the extraneous data pared down into one impossible thought.

“Yeah.”

“Did you mean it?”

Tyler licks his dry and split lip. “I thought. It wouldn’t hurt so much if I could heal like you. Jagr said that he bit you. He’d have to fight you eventually, because he bit you.”

“He did,” Jamie confirms. Tyler stares at the wall and lets that sink in. 

“And you think you should bite me,” Tyler prompts.

“Maybe. Look. When the wire’s off, when I’m in the arena, there are five guys at most still out here. If you, just you, could get out, you could call Taylor’s brother in. If you can’t get him, then you’ll have to go to the police. We have a list of names, missing persons, that should give you credibility. Taylor’s people are a better bet though. They’ll be ready for the guards, and they’ll know what we all are. With the cops…there’s a lot of explaining that could get weird.”

Tyler closes his eyes and processes that. 

“So what’s the downside?” 

“You could die,” Jamie says.

“Oh, is that all.”

“You could get changed but not get out, and they’d send you to the arena. Maybe take you away from me.”

Somehow that’s worse than the thought of dying. 

“So it needs to be under my clothes, so they can’t see it and start taking me seriously,” Tyler says. He feels dizzy at the idea of it, of letting himself be mauled. 

“Tyler.” Jamie says his name like it hurts. “I’m serious. You’re already hurt. You could die.”

“Do you think there’s any hope of us getting out alive any other way?”

Jamie presses his face against the back of Tyler’s neck, his breath warm and soft. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he confesses. “I don’t want to be the one that kills you.”

Every breath hurts, and Tyler can feel the pounding of his heart in his bruised or broken ribs. 

“I’d rather die for hope than for nothing,” Tyler says. 

“Jagr says that you need to have the bite a few days before the full moon. We don’t have much time. We could wait until next month, but…”

“But they might kill us all before then,” Tyler finishes when Jamie trails off. “I might be even more fucked up by then.” He feels dizzy, light. Like he might float out of his body.

“Come on. Do it,” he says, and Jamie sits up.

“Where do you want it?” Jamie asks, his gaze down, dark lashes hiding his eyes.

Tyler rolls on his back, and yeah, he doesn’t want to stay there for long. He wriggles the waistband of his pants down, pulls it show his hip and part of his thigh is showing. Modesty seems kind of alien at this point.

“Here. This side, so I can still sleep on the other,” he says. He’d thought, when he was dating the tattoo artist, of getting ink there. It seems fitting that he’ll be marked by pain, changed, in the same location. 

Jamie whines, shifting, hesitant and miserable.

“Deep!” Jagr urges from beyond the wall. “Don’t be a pup about it.”

Jamie paces around, choosing his angle, steeling his nerve. 

“The hall’s clear,” Taylor says.

Jamie finds his nerve and rushes in, one clawed hand closing over Tyler’s mouth, his muzzle darting down, fangs closing on the outside of Tyler’s thigh. 

It hurts like a son of a bitch, crushing and tearing at the same time, burning. Tyler screams, muffled against Jamie’s hand, screams even though it feels like his ribs are turning inside out. Hits, struggles, fights even though his hand is broken and Jamie probably doesn’t even feel it. 

He’s crying when Jamie pulls away from the fresh wound, when Jamie sobs and cradles Tyler to his chest. “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry,” he sobs over and over and Tyler feels sick, so much pain everywhere that he’s about to puke, would make himself puke on the off-chance it would feel better except that puking itself is gonna hurt too much. 

He lets Jamie hold him, lets Jamie’s tears fall on his face warm and damp. He closes his eyes and welcomes the darkness.

=================

Jamie holds Tyler, his lean body limp in Jamie’s arms. He wonders if Jagr felt like this, the desperate attempt to keep someone alive, even as the bite might curse them to something worse. He holds Tyler, feels his temperature rise from _kind of warm_ to cook an egg on his forehead. They spend a day and a night, Tyler feverish in his arms, Jamie trying to keep him hydrated, trying to keep him cool enough that he doesn’t fry his brains. 

Taylor watches for the guards, warns him with enough time to pose Tyler like he’s just sleeping off the ass-kicking. 

He could just leave Tyler there, on the mattress against the wall. It feels better to touch him though; he breathes easier, quieter, when Jamie puts a hand on him or when he moves Tyler’s hand to rest on his stomach. 

Sometime between dinner and breakfast, Tyler twitches and jerks. 

“I’m here, I’m here,” Jamie whispers and he settles again. 

“Jame…” Tyler’s voice is a faint rasp, and Jamie tips Tyler’s head back a little so he can hear. 

“Yeah, Tyler. I’m here. What do you need?”

“Don’ leave.” He swallows, his throat so dry it’s an effort. “Don’ leave me.”

“I won’t,” Jamie promises, and Tyler goes quiet again—Jamie doesn’t know if he’d call it sleep or unconsciousness. 

Jagr flags the guards down as they go to take one of the twins. They take him instead, bring him back half an hour later. 

“It’s set,” Jagr says when they’ve gone again. “Full moon. Night fight.”

Days pass. Jamie watches Tyler, the state of his cuts and bruises. He checks the bite mark, inflamed and stinking. If they’d known, how bad things would get, if he’d thought to offer it a month ago, when Tyler had more meat on his bones, maybe it would have worked better. 

The next time he checks, the skin is pale, the wound closed. 

“Oh thank god,” Jamie gasps, crying again, face pressed to Tyler’s chest. 

Tyler pats Jamie’s shoulder, his hand weak and uncoordinated, but it’s an intentional movement, more than Jamie has seen from him in days. 

Jamie lifts his head and Tyler blinks up at him, disoriented and exhausted, but alive, so fucking alive that Jamie wants to laugh, wants to howl.

“How do you feel?” he asks instead, and Tyler’s eyes cross as he tries to focus.

“Not dead,” Tyler says, which is about the best they could hope for. 

Jamie goes to get the bottle of water, helps Tyler sit up to drink.

“You’ll feel better when the moon’s up,” Jamie says, and Tyler nods weakly.

He wishes he could give Tyler the time to recover, wishes they could wait, but they’ve got less than a day and he can’t let this all be for nothing.

“We talked it over, while you were out of it. You need to memorize Taylor’s brother’s number. You have to get out. Nothing else is important. As soon as they take Jagr and I, you bend the chain-link fence and you go as fast and hard as you can until you’re out of this place. You’re gonna feel weird. The colors will be weird, your body will be weird. You aren’t trained to fight. Nobody expects you to. You just run. Don’t worry about anybody else.” 

Tyler nods, focusing in with effort. “What if he doesn’t answer. What if Jagr was right?”

Jamie takes a breath. “You don’t come back here. Not for any reason. Go to the police. Get your dad to help you. We’ll give you names, of people we know that died here, or those of us who are probably on missing-persons lists somewhere. To make sure they take you seriously.”

“Shit,” Tyler breathes. “That’s a lot to remember.”

“I know,” Jamie says, “You can do it. You ready?”

Tyler nods, and Jamie starts, his voice a whisper as he gives information that could doom an entire pack. “Sid’s number is 412—”

They work for hours, repeating the information, pounding it into Tyler’s head with sheer repetition. The wolves had whispered while he was sleeping, making the list of names, the dead and the missing. Hilary has made mnemonics for that part at least, nonsense sentences that are silly enough to remember. It’s selfish, Jamie knows, but he gives Tyler Jordie’s number too, when he’s sure Tyler has the rest memorized. 

“I want him to know…if I don’t get out of here. I want you to be able to call him. He’s a good man. Anything you need, he’ll help you.”

Tyler nods, and Jamie can feel the first tugs of the moon starting to pull at his body, the itch of it along his scalp, down his spine. He looks down into Tyler’s eyes, wide and dilated, and knows he feels it too. 

“Here they come,” Taylor hisses and Jamie can hear them, the sounds of their boots, the clink of their weapons. 

“Jamie,” Tyler says, and when Jamie turns back to him he’s moving in, lips crashing against Jamie’s in something too-desperate to be called a kiss. 

Jamie whines and grabs on, hugs Tyler tight and breathes him in. The guards are closer then, coming for him first instead of Jagr, and Jamie shoves him away, down onto the mattress and Tyler turns his back on the door, plays dead while the guards get Jamie leashed and taken out. The cell door clangs shut behind him, and Jamie listens, but the high-powered hum of the electric wire doesn’t pick up again and he thinks maybe, maybe this will work.


	15. Run

They take Jamie, and Tyler stays where he is, facing the wall, lips tingling from slamming into Jamie’s, his heart pounding as he waits for them to come back, for them to change their minds and take him, for the wire to hum back to life. There’s a weird itch, all over his body, something under his skin twitching, alive like a fire-ant pile, swarming awake. 

The guards come back for Jagr, and he jokes with them as they bind him, but his voice has gone gravely with the promise of the full moon, the beginnings of his shift, and the guards don’t joke back. 

“…the convicts in charge of the prison now?” Tyler hears one of them asking somebody, but there’s no answer by the time they’ve gone down the hall and around the corner. 

“All clear,” Taylor calls, and Tyler’s hands are buzzing with adrenaline when he rolls over, Sid’s number and Jordie’s number a twenty-digit song he keeps singing to himself as he hurries to the front of his cell. He listens, and he can hear so much more now, can hear the gate in the arena clanging open to let Jagr into the holding pen. 

The wire brackets that hold the chain-link to the frame, that have stubbornly resisted his every attempt to bend them, give easily under his clawed fingers; he unloops three up and three across. He takes a deep breath, wishing anybody else could do this. Literally any of them would be a better choice, would have a better chance. 

“You can do it,” Taylor tells him; this is for her, for the baby inside her. “Now go,” and it’s as close to a starting flag as he’s going to get. He takes one more breath and pulls, lifting the chain-link and the electric wire together, opening up a corner big enough to slide out of. 

The cement floor scrapes the side of his knee as he shimmies under the wire, a weird burn-and-itch that’s gone by the time he stands up. There are cameras in the hall, Jamie had told him, most likely manned 24/7. He can’t hesitate, can’t waste precious seconds. Run, Jamie said, so Tyler runs, down the hall to the T intersection that leads to the arena or the smaller rooms. 

Dillon is already shifted as Tyler runs past, massive and wooly, and he slashes the front of his cell, gets thrown back, groaning, but the wire hangs in sparking tatters. 

Something moves in Shaw’s cell, the mattress being picked up and stood up against the fence. The wires crackle against the fabric. The chemical burning smell of it flares through Tyler’s sinuses, and then Shaw is hitting the bed, two and then three times, slamming through with brute force and sheer stubborn will. The whole front of the cell falls into the hall and Tyler dodges to not get trapped underneath. Guns are firing, nearby but not _here_ , and Tyler has just enough time to think _Jamie_ , to realize that Jamie is rushing the guards in the arena, throwing his fucking life away for Tyler, to keep the guards there. 

He hits the intersection, and Shaw is at his side, still carrying the mattress. Tyler turns right, away from the gunfire in the arena, away from Jamie. Shaw covers his back, the smoking bed providing visual and physical cover as the guards enter the hall firing. “I will fucking kill you all!” Shaw scream at them. A shot has gotten through the shield and blood streaks down his side.

Tyler runs, discounts the doors he’s seen behind, following Jamie’s best-guess of which direction to go. He hears a yelp behind him and turns to see Shaw with his ankle shot to splinters, sees him falling, hears him yell “Go! Go! Go!” and then a bullet catches Shaw in one side of his head, blows out the other side in a spray of brains and blood and Tyler hits the double-doors in front of him, panicked. 

The other side of the door is a garage of some kind, a big truck, the van Tyler was taken in, a couple black SUVs off to the side of the vast open area. So much fucking empty ground between him and the door, but it’s his only chance and he lunges for it, running on all fours now, claws catching where bare feet hadn’t. He hears the door bang open again behind him and he remembers Jamie saying to run in zig-zags so he pushes left, feels bullets skim his fur before he hears the gunfire. There’s a huge roll-up door and a smaller, human-sized one that he hits without slowing down, taking it clean off the hinges.

Beyond, beyond is a maze of dark shapes lit only by the full moon, cast-cement pipes and supports and structures, surplus pieces that stand twice as tall as him in some places. He dives, feels a burn across his shoulder, hears bullets pinging off of the construction materials. And then he’s in the maze, and he’s not afraid. He can hear them, smell them. Footsteps echo from his left and he turns right, climbs over a boxy-looking thing with holes, that he would never have gotten over as a human, follows the silence until he can see the far-off headlights of the highway, until he comes up to another chain link fence, topped with razor wire. He peels it from it’s supports at the bottom and passes under, and he’s out.

Freedom. The thought of it makes his head swim, makes him dizzy with relief and for a second, a stupid selfish second, he dreams of just going home, of warm showers and soft sheets. 

Tyler shakes his head. Jamie, he reminds himself, and his chest hurts; he aches with loss, even as he tries to have hope. He’s seen Jamie shot before. Jamie is tough, strong. _Valuable._ It’s the full moon, and the moon helped Hilary heal when Jamie saw her guts on the floor.

Shaw though, they killed him. Dead, for this. For Tyler to get help. To save everybody. To save Taylor. _Phone phone phone,_ he thinks, and then turns his head back to the rhythm of numbers he needs to call. He scurries away from the cement plant, down the road that leads between darkened buildings in this run-down part of town. An engine rumbles and he lays his ears back against his head, snarls, steps into deeper shadows, cowers down behind a dented dumpster as the vehicle cruises slowly past. Looking for him. Shit. 

Sid’s number.

Jordie’s number.

The silly words to remember all the names, _He knew a song big dogs should sing while flying, must sing, coming home to Jamie Benn…_

He heads the opposite way from the SUV that just passed and almost gets hit by the acquisitions team’s van. He jumps back, fur ruffled by the wind of their passing, but it doesn’t look like they saw him; their tail-lights don’t go red until the next intersection. He can’t. Shit. He’s the wrong guy for this. They’re gonna catch him. He needs a phone. Right away, so that if he’s caught, at least help will be on the way.

He crosses the bigger street down into another alley. There’s a door with peeling green paint, but the step is clear and looks like it’s been used recently. The stenciled name says “Ray’s Sharpening” and fuck it. If there’s no phone, at least the guards won’t know where to look for him while he figures something better out.

He hits the door with his shoulder. It’s solid, but gives way on the second try. Fuck you, door; he’s a fucking werewolf. Also, maybe a little hysterical.

Inside is full of tools, the smell of metal and oil. There’s a glass display case full of scissors, racks of spiky disks, a row of axes up one wall, some saws on the other. And there on the counter, a fucking phone, and he is so fucking relieved he almost faints. He picks it up and listens to the blessed sound of the dial tone.

He takes a calming breath, two and then three. He can’t do this with claws. It would be better not to talk in growls.

1-412-612…he dials the digits of Sid’s number, hides behind the cash register as headlights pass by the dirty veil of the store’s front glass, criss-crossed by iron bars. 

Two rings. Three. Oh god, please pick up, please. 

“Who is this?” The man’s voice is stern, sharp.


	16. Fight

Jamie growls when they come for him, but he doesn’t fight. The usual detail of five takes him to the arena, two armed, three on the poles. When they get him into the holding cell, the armed men stay and the others go out again, the same men coming back with Jagr and two more handlers. Jamie looks up, eyes seeking out the cameras around the roofline, wondering what they’re seeing, where the images go. What is the fucking point?

“Ready to die?” Jagr calls across the arena, too proud to kill himself, too heart-sick to live. 

“Lets do this,” Jamie yells back. He waits for the gates to open, but the door behind Jagr, the one that leads to the cells, opens first, four more guards coming in, rifles slung across their backs. Spectators. Jamie bites his lip to keep from grinning, because this is perfect; this is better than he could have hoped for, better than their planning. 

The gates click and swing open and Jagr leaps from his cage, shifting as he jumps, salty fur and bared fangs.

Jamie comes out slower, shifting but stalking around, like he’s getting a feel for Jagr’s style. His eyes are on the fence, on the guards. The moon shivers through him, and he has a fleeting moment wondering what Tyler looks like in his other shape, if he’s lean and proud and beautiful like this.

Jagr rushes him, a punch with one hand and a slash with the other following in quick succession, quick, skilled and strong. Jamie reels back bleeding, and Jagr’s eyes narrow. 

“You lied to me,” Jagr hisses, too low for the guards to hear.

“Yeah. I did,” Jamie admits, circles out of Jagr’s range. He has no pride in it. No shame either. Getting Tyler out, that outweighs everything. Taylor’s brother coming and saving those who live through the night, that would be a nice bonus. “I’m not here to kill you. But you can still die fighting,” he promises, pleads. “Fight them instead of me. Give Tyler a few more seconds. Do the right thing.”

“You son of dogs,” Jagr snarls, snaps his teeth at Jamie and springs at him again, fury twisting his face. Jamie dodges again, gets a good body blow in before Jagr grabs him by the throat and slams him down. 

“I pull the fence, you go under,” Jagr hisses into Jamie’s face and Jamie nods, gets his feet up between them and sends Jagr flying. The guards are still watching, and Jamie glances over just as one’s hand goes to an ear-piece, the guard’s interest in the match dissolving as he starts yelling orders.

“Now!” Jamie yells and he and Jagr race to the edge closest to the guards. The men are caught between answering the call on the radio and the wolves rushing at them. Jagr grabs the fence just above the horizontal bar at the base and rips upward just as Jamie slides in like he was playing baseball again. Guns fire, and Jamie can’t spare a glance to see how hurt Jagr is, but he sees a spray of red as he slides, hears a howl of pain. Jagr is upright though, and Jamie flat on the ground, and Jamie gets the best of it, a bullet that cracks against his shin, another grazing up his ribs and into his armpit, and then he’s on his feet, one of the guards under him as he charges, claws and teeth rending, turning the guy so the next spray of bullets can’t hit Jamie center-mass. In a second of quiet, he drops the first corpse and makes another, but his path to Tyler is cut off and there are guards on either side of him. 

A bullet hits the back of his knee and exits through the front, and Jamie goes down screaming. He rolls, pulls down another guard, takes two more bullets into his stomach but gets the third kill. He’s hit, thigh and chest, shoulder and hip. He can’t stand, can’t reach anyone else. He collapses back, and if any of them come close enough, he’ll try one more rush, one more grab-and-slash before he’s done. 

He hears running feet, gunfire. Tyler. 

A guard stands beside him, too far away to be grabbed, brings the barrel of his gun to bear on Jamie’s head. 

“No,” says another, the only other left with him. “We might need him.”

He pulls a pistol, turns his aim low, and Jamie’s other knee goes to pieces. He howls, screams, and they shoot out his elbows, one after another. 

There are no words left, his screams go on and on until the one in charge walks carefully up to him, draws one steel-toed boot back, and kicks him in the side of the skull.

And then there’s nothing.


	17. The call

“Who is this? How did you get this number?” Sid’s voice is sharp, cutting.

Tyler hadn’t planned what to say at all, not the opening words, at least. He almost tells Sid Jordie’s phone number, because that’s what comes after Sid’s number and together they’re all he can hold in his head right now. 

“Taylor,” he says, trying to cut to the important parts. “I mean. I’m Tyler. But I know where Taylor is.”

“Talk,” the man growls, and Tyler hopes to god this is Sid and not somebody who shouldn’t hear this, because the sound of that growl makes him want to fold up and bare his neck and maybe piss himself.

“Dallas. South of town. There’s a cement plant that’s closed. They’re doing experiments, they’ve got sixteen of them.” Panic and exhaustion are melting into one another and Tyler knows he’s not making perfect sense. “Had sixteen of them.” Because Shaw died tonight, and maybe Jamie, maybe Jagr. That’s still not right. “Of us. Taylor says, she says bring Geno.” 

“What’s the address?”

Tyler whines. “Fuck if I know. How many abandoned cement factories can there possibly be?” 

The person Tyler’s assuming is Sid huffs his annoyance. “You’ve seen her though? She’s okay?”

Tyler doesn’t want to go talking about her business, and he makes a little shoulder-shrug that Sid can’t see. 

“Relatively? They’re not…she doesn’t go to the arena. That’s better than most of them.”

Sid is silent for a terribly long time. Another car passes outside, but Tyler can’t tell if it’s one of the complex’s vehicles or just someone going to a night job. He starts babbling to fill the silence, the things that Jamie had seemed to think were important, back when they started evaluating for a break-out, added to what Tyler saw going out. “There’s twelve armed guards, well-trained, former special-ops, Jamie thought. The uh, there’s a chain-link fence, with barbed wire on top, around the outside. I went out through the garage. Go in and left. They keep the prisoners in the cells, and there’s electric wire keeping them from busting out. There’s a fight almost every day. It’s never dark. There’s a camera on the hall by the cells, but not in the cells.”

“Stop,” Sid cuts in and Tyler goes quiet.

“Forty-eight hours,” Sid says, and Tyler shakes his head, gritting his teeth. So fucking much can happen in that time. “I’ve got people spread over half the continent, looking for her. I’m in god-damn Alaska right now. But we’re coming. Don’t _do_ anything.”

“Hurry,” Tyler says, and Sid needs to make some calls so Tyler hangs up on him before terror can turn to anger. He doesn’t want to run yet, doesn’t want to be hunted down like a stray. He picks up the receiver again and dials the other number that’s running through his head on a continual loop. 

“Hello?” the man on the other end asks, his voice wary, curious. It’s a good voice, the accent just like Jamie’s and Tyler aches to hear it. 

“Is this Jordie?” Tyler asks.

“Yeah, I’m Jordie. Who’s this?” 

Jordie is a lot less scary to talk to than Sid was.

“I’m. I’m Tyler. I. If your brother is still alive, I know where he is.”

Jordie’s warm voice goes cold. “What? Who are you? Where are you?”

“Look,” Tyler whispers, quick and urgent; he doesn’t have time for this. “There’s this psycho cage-fight bullshit. They keep the fighters locked up, make them fight. They’re fucking killing people. Can you come to Dallas?” 

“How do I know this isn’t some scam?”

A car pulls up out front, the lights on even as the motor stops. Fuck.

“He calls for you,” Tyler whispers. “When he’s hurt, sick. When they beat the shit out of him, he doesn’t call for his mom or dad, he calls for you.” 

The back door to the shop opens, the one Tyler came through. He hangs up the phone on Jordie saying he’ll be on the next flight out, stuffs his knuckle between his teeth to keep from making a noise. A flashlight beam sweeps the shop, chest-high, and Tyler cowers behind the counter. They’re gonna find him. They’re gonna find him and they’re gonna kill him. He tries to summon the anger, the strength to fight, but he’s spent, scared.

“Car 90, what’s your situation?” The voice is crackly, coming over a portable radio. 

“We’re at the location,” the woman with the light says, “Back door definitely broken into. No signs yet of a suspect.”

Tyler sags in relief. Police. The shop must be wired with an alarm. He isn’t sure yet if he’ll tell them about the complex, but they’ll get him out of here at least. 

He stands up, and both officers startle, guns swinging his way. 

“Whoa!” he cries, holds his hands in front of himself. He’s been shot enough for one day. “Hey, hi, I was just about to call you,” he starts, but the woman is yelling at him to put up his hands and the man shoves him against a wall, frisks the tattered sweatpants and then fucking handcuffs his wrists together. They march him out of the shop, shoving him ahead of them. He gets a glimpse of himself reflected in the car’s window as they’re shoving him into the backseat, shirtless and skinny, dirty with dried blood and the grime of his escape, his beard and hair grown out scruffy and shaggy. He gapes, doesn’t resist as they push his head down so he doesn’t bang it. He doesn’t recognize himself, the wide eyes and hollow cheeks. The party-boy he was, with his perfect skin and gym-sculpted body are gone, left behind in that cell, lost to pain and hunger.

“We’ve got a suspect in custody; the owner’s on site. We’re just gonna help him lock up and then bring this guy in,” the man says into the radio, and Tyler only realizes then that the cops might have been in on it. He lets himself fall back against the seat, because if they’re talking about bringing him in, it’ll be harder for him to disappear, so they’re probably legit, and he’s probably safe. For now, for now he’s done what he was supposed to do. 

For now, he can rest.


	18. One phone call

Jamie wakes up, which is a surprise. In a lot of pain, which isn’t. 

He’s vertical, which is weird, and he struggles to open his eyes. He’s looking down at his own legs, and he kind of zones out watching his knees heal for a minute. He’s back in the chair, where this nightmare began. Arms and legs and chest buckled down with four-inch wide leather straps. 

There’s a cell-phone chirping somewhere nearby, and Jamie keeps his head down, keeps his face hidden in shadow.

“Sir,” one of the guards says, the one that said to keep Jamie alive. He’s off down the hall, probably thinks he’s too far away for Jamie to hear.

“Sir, thank you for returning my call. I didn’t want you to see the arena footage in the morning without alerting you first. There was an…incident. The fighters tried to escape, and there was unrest in the cells. We have four casualties, another man injured in the infirmary. Two of the subjects had to be terminated; a third might not make it.” He pauses a second, but Jamie can’t hear the other end of the conversation. “Benn and Shaw,” he says. Jamie’s heartbeat kicks up a notch. He’s a dead man, now. If the arena footage is going to their higher-up, and they’ve told that boss he’s dead, they can’t let him live for long.

“No, no; nobody got out. The facility is secure.” Jamie bites back a whine. Tyler. Fuck. Would they even value him enough to report? Jamie’s whipping boy, some kid they grabbed off the street. Did they kill him? Catch him and bring him back to the cells? 

“We’ve got a few of them tranquilized, and we’re making repairs and upgrades to the cells. We’re using the transport boxes for temporary holding…Yes sir. Yes sir.” He eventually stops agreeing with his boss and hangs up. 

“Hanson, we’ve got twenty-four hours before replacements for the casualties arrive. I want every man pulling his weight here.” Jamie listens in on the local-leader giving out assignments, orders for an armed guard on the cell row, orders to go shoot Jagr again. “Tell Wake and Anderson to keep patrolling. We _have_ to find that fucking kid.”

Jamie sways with relief. They probably wouldn’t call Shaw a kid, so that means Tyler has to be out there, has to be alive and beyond their reach. 

Heavy booted steps come towards him; the barred door to the chair-room door opens. If Tyler got out, then help is coming. All Jamie has to do is stay alive until then. 

The bucket of water to the face catches him unprepared and he jerks up, coughing and sputtering. Fire runs through his healing wounds, knees, elbows, chest and gut at the sudden movement, and he can’t help crying out. 

The man looks down at him, his eyes cold and very very serious. “This is the part where you talk,” he says. “This is the part where the hurting starts.”

Jamie looks up at him, water trailing down his neck, dripping from his hair. Tyler is out there. Tyler is alive. All he has to do is stall. 

==========

The cops take Tyler to the Dallas city jail, shoving him where they want him, from car to a locked waiting room to a communal cell. It’s all so familiar that he forgets he’s a person for a while, forgets that he’s outside, and he he has rights.

“I need to make a phone call,” he says, as he’s thrown into a holding area with about ten other guys. It’s more people than he’s seen in one place in almost two months. It feels crowded, invasive. The smells of their bodies, alcohol, drugs, smoke, it rolls his stomach.

“After you’re processed,” a clerk in a uniform says. 

Tyler follows the guy as far as he can down the bars. “When will that be?” 

“Couple hours.”

And that’s too long, too long to be powerless, locked up. He’s not sure what he needs to do, what he even could do if he was free. 

“Look, I’m a missing person. I was kidnapped. I know where some other missing people are. I have names!” He’s yelling now, shaking the bars, gritting his teeth against the ache of the change thrumming through his bones.

The clerk doesn’t even look up from his clipboard. “Tell it to processing, buddy.”

One of the other prisoners snorts. “Settle down before I settle you.” His hand falls heavy on the back of Tyler’s neck, and Tyler’s body moves before his brain, turning and slamming both hands into the guy’s heavily muscled chest, sending him flying back against the cement back wall. The clerk walks back to his desk, ignores it when the guy gets back up, scowling.

Tyler snarls, feels more animal than person. “You don’t want to touch me.”

He’s not sure if he’s shifted a little, or if he just sounds like a guy who could back up the threat, but the big bruiser hesitates, eyes wider than they were a moment ago, shakes his head. “Just keep it down. None of us want to be here.”

Tyler waits, but the guy goes back to sit on the bench that runs the length of the cell. Leans in to murmur with another prisoner. Nobody else messes with him, but nobody talks either. He sits alone and miserable as old guys go out, new guys come in. It’s claustrophobic, so many people, so close to him. He pulls his knees up and rests his forehead against them. Tries to plan what he’s going to say. Runs Sid and Jordie’s numbers over in his head, making sure he’ll be able to call when he gets out.

The cell gets more crowded, but the half of an ass-width on either side of him stays open on the bench. A newcomer is put in. He stands just past the door, contemplating the lack of seats. He starts to walk Tyler’s way, but three other guys grab him, ones that’d been there when Tyler came in. There is a flurry of hushed whispers, but nobody touches him.

It’s hours, but finally his turn comes. They take him out, in cuffs, to a tall desk where he stands to talk to the clerk on the other side, gives his name and address and the number of a phone he last saw being taken out of his pocket by the guys that grabbed him. “What’s this about kidnapping?” But Tyler has figured out that he doesn’t want to open that mess, not if he can help it. Mixing cops and werewolves just seems like a horrible idea. 

“I need to make my phone call.” That, at least, his dad hammered into his head at an early age. 

The clerk sighs, pushes the phone over. Tyler hesitates. 

“What time is it?”

“Four fifteen.”

Tyler’s time-sense is fucked to hell, but apparently he’s not the only one to have that problem, because the clerk sighs like it’s a recurring issue. “AM.”

Shit, Tyler would rather talk to dad’s secretary than the man himself; Carol likes him better than dad does anyway.

He sets his jaw though, dials his dad’s cell. Fuck. 

“Yes.” His dad answers the phone on the second ring, his voice commanding and alert, like he’d been waiting up for the phone to ring. Tyler tries to put some semblance of confidence in his voice, some ghost of nonchalance. 

“Hey, dad. Sorry to call so late.” He sounds like a parody of his old self, awkward and stilted. “I’m at the police station, I was wondering if you would send a lawyer or something.”

It’s been almost two months. He would have stopped by at the semester break, if nothing else. Raided the liquor cabinet. Asked for cash. He hasn’t used his cards, hasn’t driven his cars. Somebody must have pointed it out to dad. He must know Tyler’s been gone.

“Now is not the time, Tyler.” 

Tyler’s lips quirk up. He’s kind of amazed at himself, for expecting anything different.

“I apologize for the inconvenience, but I am kind of a mess right now, dad. I would _hate_ to make a bad impression on the family name.”

There is a long moment of silence, where Tyler thinks his dad might hang up, let him stew in his own perceived failure for a few days before riding to the rescue. 

“You won’t believe the places I’ve been,” Tyler adds, hoping the vague threat of revealing his improprieties will be the spur to start things in motion.

“Sit tight, don’t say a god-damn word to anybody. Do you understand?” His father’s voice is like steel, hard and cold. “I will be there with an attorney in an hour. Not one word.” He hangs up and Tyler shakes his head, hands the phone back. 

_I’ve done what I can,_ he keeps telling himself. Sid’s on his way. He’s done his job.


	19. Daddy Dearest

It’s less than an hour later when a guard comes for Tyler. Officer, he says to himself, officer. Not guard. He tries not to brace against the coming pain, but he’s been so conditioned, has never left the cell and come back without being hurt, burned, beaten. He’s shaking as he’s taken out, through multiple doors, stopping at window to a desk where he signs a paper that says he had no personal effects to reclaim here. 

He’s taken through one last door and there’s dad, in his impeccable three-piece suit, polished shoes, not a hair out of place. He’s with another man, but ignoring his presence. Probably an attorney, which makes him in dad’s employ, and not deserving of casual conversation if Mr. Seguin himself doesn’t desire it. 

His dad’s gaze sweeps over him as he steps out, not even a hint of recognition, and Tyler has a fleeting moment of cold terror that he doesn’t exist anymore, that he’s invisible, that he can never be real again.

And then his father’s lip curls in distaste. “Tyler? My god, what have you done to yourself?” 

Tyler shivers at the air-conditioning on his bare chest, shrugs and rubs the palms of his hands on his thighs to wipe the sweat away. 

His dad glances at the attorney, frowns back at Tyler, lips pressed together. 

“Let’s go. Mr. Marshall will drive us home.” Tyler follows, and it’s so strange to be walking through fluorescent-lit halls without a hand pushing or dragging him, to be moving at his own pace on his own feet. 

He gets lost a little, when they come outside. The sun is just rising over the city, lighting up Thanksgiving Tower, Reunion Tower, turning the glassed sides of all the buildings to brilliant gold. He’d forgotten, how beautiful the sun. He stares, his eyes watering. The feel of warmth on his skin might be an illusion, this early in the day, in the year, but he basks in it anyway. 

“Get in the damn car,” his dad snaps when it pulls up. “Ride in the front. My god you reek.”

Tyler climbs in, overwhelmed by the smells of leather and plastic, the take-out food the lawyer had brought home the night before, the cologne and perfume locked in a small space. It’s worse when the car moves, nearly two months in one building and Tyler’s new sensitivities working together to make every turn disorienting. 

He looks in the rear view mirror once, sees his father watching him, a frown between his eyes. He doesn’t look again.

He’s glad to get back to the house, right up until his dad dismisses their five-hundred-dollars an hour chauffeur, until it’s just Tyler and his father, walking through the door, into scents and sights and textures that Tyler had been very sure he’d never smell or see or feel again.

“My office.” There’s no invitation or question, just an order, and Tyler is too conditioned by the man to disobey. Contemplating the difficulty of cleaning dirt from the seats is beneath dad’s concerns, so Tyler doesn’t worry about it either. He takes one of the chairs in front of dad’s desk, and his father takes the massive throne behind it. 

“Tell me, Tyler. What places _have_ you been these past months? What have you done to yourself? You do realize you look terrible.” 

Tyler feels like he did calling Sid, an ant under a magnifying glass. 

“This wasn’t my fault,” and he grits his teeth after the words come out, wishes he could take them back. It’s like every interaction with his father since he was four fucking years old. “They grabbed me. Off the street. They took me in a van.”

His father’s eyes narrow. Tyler takes a ragged breath.

“There were these guys. They were kidnapping people. Making them fight.”

His father scoffs. “And they took _you_?” 

Tyler shakes his head. That isn’t. “Not to fight. They had a guy. He wouldn’t, wasn’t doing what they wanted. They needed somebody to use as leverage. Someone to be his friend that they could hurt.”

His dad’s lips press together. Angry color rises on his cheeks.

The silence stretches and Tyler tries to fill it. He tries to run the odds, tries to think how long it will take Sid and his people to get here, how long the prisoners can wait, with who-the-hell knows what’s happening to them in the aftermath of Tyler’s escape. The people his dad brings in won’t be cops; they’ll be employees, controllable. “Look, I know I’m out, I’m safe. But. There’s like sixteen people still there. There’s this girl, and they got her pregnant. I mean. How fucked up is that? Please, you could. If you called in some guys, had them bust them out, if you’d do that, I swear to you, I’d be good. For the rest of your life, I’d make you proud. No more guys, no more parties. I’ll.” Tears prickle at his eyes, hot and salty. “I’ll get married. To whoever you want. I’ll give her as many babies as she wants, and I’ll name the first son after you. I’ll…”

“Stop,” his dad cuts in, disgusted. “God, you’re a mess, and a disgrace.” His lip curls and he waves Tyler away. “Go clean yourself up and don’t bring up this nonsense again.”

Tyler gapes at him, hands shaking. No, he…he has to at least listen as Tyler offers up his life, his happiness, as a bargaining chip. 

“I will not tell you twice,” his dad warns, and Tyler knows, that nothing he says will matter, will get through. 

He stumbles to the door, struggling to breathe. With no help from his dad’s people, and Sid coming maybe-too-late, it feels like he’s failed, like no help is coming at all. 

“Do close the door on your way out,” his father calls, and Tyler has never been good at defying him to his face, so he does. His knees give out as it clicks shut, and he sits down instead of falling, leans back against the wall.


	20. The System Breaks Down

“He knew a song, big dogs should sing, while flying, just sing, must sing, coming home, coming home…” Jamie has forgotten the next words, the important words, he needs…needs to find the way. Find Tyler. No, that’s wrong. If he finds Tyler, he’ll lead the men there, the bad men, and they’ll hurt Tyler.

“Stop! Fucking stop!” 

The guard who’s been asking questions, who has been hurting him, stuffs a rag in Jamie’s mouth, makes a noise of frustration. Jamie hasn’t tried to stay silent through the questioning, first telling them that Tyler ran to the cops, then that he’s running to Mexico. He gave them the rhyme, because it hurts nobody. They already know the names of the dead and the doomed. He almost told them Jordie’s number, told them Tyler was calling help, and after that he started spouting off random strings of numbers, telling himself after every jumble that _that one, that’s Sid’s number_ until he doesn’t even know anymore, what anybody’s number is.

The cell-phone chirps again and the guard steps back, slams the door of the temporary cell, paces the hall outside as he answers.

Jamie sags in his bonds. The good thing about the rag is that it keeps him from poking the hole where his canine tooth used to be. The bad thing is that he can’t swallow, can’t clear the blood that’s rolling down his throat from his broken nose. He hangs forward, tries to drip instead of drain back. Tries to breathe through injured and swollen sinuses. He can hear the guard, but can’t catch the voice on the other end, not over the wet rasp of his own breathing.

“Yes sir? No, I didn’t…His name? Maybe the acquisitions team? No, sir. That is quite a coincidence. I…yes sir.” He takes the phone away from his face, looks down the hall. 

“Hanson,” he says, and hands the other guard the phone. He looks uncomfortable with the order to pass the phone, shifts his weight, glances to see that Jamie is still restrained.

“Yes sir,” Hanson says. He glances at the head guard. “Yes sir. MmHm, yes. I understand.”

Hanson shifts the phone into his off hand and draws his pistol from the underarm holster, levels it at the other man’s head and pulls the trigger, spraying his brains over the wall. Jamie flinches, sends splinters of pain all through his body. If the guards are killing each other, it is not a good sign for the future of the prisoners, not good at all.

“Yes sir,” he continues, calm as if he didn’t just kill his superior officer. “The kid got out. Shaw helped him as far as the door, and he ran for it.” There is a long pause as Hanson listens to the voice on the other end. “Benn is still alive. Walker was questioning him.” Another pause. “I don’t know. The man who fired on him thought he hit him, but he didn’t go down. MmHmm. It’s possible.”

He’s silent for a long time, except for an occasional “Yes sir,” listening to a string of orders. “What about Benn?” He listens carefully to the reply. “Yes sir.” 

He taps his thumb on the phone and puts it in his pocket when the call is done, looks Jamie over like he’s double-checking the restraints, shakes the gate to be sure of the lock. 

He walks away and Jamie doesn’t know if things just got better or a whole lot worse.

=========  
Tyler sits on his ass in the hall by his father’s office, knuckles against his lips, trying to stay silent, trying to keep the tears at bay. Useless. He is useless here. He needs to get out. Go. Do…something. He’s just not sure what.

“Carol.” His dad’s voice catches his attention, and he sits up straighter, turns his head to hear better. 

“I won’t be in today. Something’s come up with the boy. MmHmm. Yes. Cancel my appointments. Yes, even the one with the General. MmHmm. Thank you, Carol, I will.”

There’s only a second of silence, and then he’s apparently dialed another number. 

“Walker.” The name is almost a bark, harsh and cold and Tyler knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that tone. “The boy that was taken for Benn. What’s his name.” 

Tyler’s breath catches in his chest, burns and he can’t seem to let it out. He never. He never said Jamie’s name, never…

“Are you telling me it’s a god-damn coincidence that I tell you to find someone for Benn to care about more than himself and you randomly pick my god-damn son?” His voice is rising now, yelling at the guy, the guard, on the other end of the call, and it can’t. It isn’t possible. 

“Give Hanson the phone.” There is a pause. “Hanson. Are you prepared for a promotion? Do you understand what that will entail? Good man. I need you to shoot Walker in the head.” The quiet goes on for a few seconds. Tyler waits, tense, but he can’t hear the shot. His dad’s tone relaxes a little when he starts talking again.

“I need an accurate assessment of the situation at your end. What did Walker not tell me.” 

Tyler would give anything to hear the other end of that conversation.

“The boy who ran,” his dad starts, “Do you think he was bitten? Infected? MmHmm. I see. So Benn is possibly a replacement for Jagr, if he is no longer viable.”

Tyler can almost hear the decisions clicking together in his dad’s head. 

“This complex is compromised. I’ll call and get at least some replacement personnel to you within eight hours. While you wait for them to get there, I want you to pack the unique specimens for transport. Both the vamps; bleed them first. Jagr, if he’s still breathing. Both the female wolves. I’ll have the secondary location ready to take them. When the extra men arrive, I want you to take the rest and fight them to the death. We’ll at least get some good footage for the investors out of this debacle.”

The man on the other end, Hanson, must ask something, because dad’s voice goes hard again. “Benn? The wolf that touched my god-damn son? I want to tell you to slit his god-damn throat, but if Jagr doesn’t make it, he’s the best hope we have of getting to phase two. Keep him alive until you know for sure, either way.”

Tyler pushes himself up the wall, stands on knees that are still shaky with shock and exhaustion and hunger. He. His dad. His fucking dad. All those military contracts, all those meetings and contacts. He wonders, if he’d been a better son, would he have been in on it, would he have been able to do something earlier. If he’d even have cared, about some strangers, some animals. 

But he didn’t and he wasn’t, and he is shaking now with anger. Claws pressing against is palms, his jaw aching with the mass of teeth widening, sharpening in his mouth. He pushes it back, pushes it down, and then turns the knob to the office door, swings it open. 

His father has started another call, but he says “I’ll have to call you back,” and hangs up when he sees Tyler standing there. 

“The guards,” Tyler says. “Call them back. Call them back right now and tell them to stop. To not hurt anybody.”

His dad shakes his head. “I told you to go get cleaned up. This is beyond your understanding. Go take a shower and we’ll talk about this when I’m done with my calls.”

“No!” Tyler crosses the room, knocking over the heavy chairs between him and the desk. He slams his hands down on it, and the granite surface cracks, lightening bolt lines going from his hands to the far edge. 

“No, I will not go take a fucking shower! You are going to call them back and tell them not to hurt _anybody_!”

His dad’s face goes white with fury. He pulls the top drawer of the desk open, reaches in and comes out with a pearl-handled revolver, heavy and glinting in the morning sun coming through the windows. 

“I’m not telling you again.”

Tyler roars, a lifetime of frustration, of anger, of helplessness, pouring out of his throat and he leaps, goes over the desk as his father brings the firearm up. The sound of it going off echoes in the room, the burn of the bullet cuts through his side, but the momentum of his rush carries him through, crashing into his father’s chest, knocking the man and the chair he’s sitting in over. Tyler has his throat in one hand, the wrist of his gun-hand in the other. 

“I won’t tell _you_ again,” Tyler growls, and his dad chokes against his grip, clawing at his fingers with his free hand. He gets a knee up, nails Tyler in the balls and Tyler jerks at the pain, distracted just enough for the gun to point his way again. The shot is inches from his face this time, the sound of it so loud, so overwhelming to his new senses that it takes a second for him to realize he’s been shot, that his own dad shot him again, blood streaming from the wound to his scalp, dust from the ceiling drifting down around him. 

His dad is clawing with both hands now. Something. Something is wrong, something gave under Tyler’s grip. He lets go, but his father continues to writhe, to kick and squirm, to struggle for air that just won’t come. He backs away in horror, watches until the end, until the man who gave him life, who _made_ him lies still and twisted, eyes bulging, his throat clawed red by his own nails. 

Shit. Shit. Tyler backs away, shaking. This wasn’t what he wanted, wasn’t what he planned. He runs, to the front door of the house. The only reason he stops there, is that he has no idea what to do next, where to go. What’s he gonna do, _run_ back across town to help Jamie. What fucking good will he do there? 

He can’t. Can’t look at his dad again. Not yet. The cell phone rings back in the office, but he doesn’t go to it. He needs. Needs to look presentable. Passable. Not half-naked and shaggy and covered in blood. He goes to his old room. Most of his favorite stuff is at the frat house at school, but what’s here will work. He finds the beard-trimmer in his bathroom. His hands are still shaking but he gets the beard buzzed down to stubble. Sets it on the longest setting and runs it over his head. There is a long pale line in his scalp where the bullet passed. He looks a little like himself when that’s done. He steps into the shower, takes five minutes to get the worst of the grime off. Pays more attention to his hands and face, makes sure there isn’t any blood left.

He goes to his closet and stares for a minute, the sheer number of options stunning him. Then he forces himself into motion, grabs jeans and a polo, socks and sneakers. Puts shoes on for the first time in almost two months. The clothes hang baggy on his narrowed frame, the shoes feel weird around his ankles.

In the back of the closet is a shoe box, that he started adding to the last time dad threatened to cut him off. A little bit here, a few hundred bucks there. Just something to tide him over if it happened again. There’s almost eight grand, and he stuffs it into the side pocket of a duffle bag, adds another change of clothes, one that might fit Jamie. He thinks he should grab something for everybody, but he’s just not up to making that many choices. Besides, it would get too bulky to carry, and he doesn’t have time, no fucking time.

He goes back to the office, tries not to see his dad as he looks around for the phone. The phone is important. There will be names on there, contacts. He’s not sure how to use it, but somebody needs to take it, and he’s the only one here. He finds it under some papers that slid off the desk when he went over it. He flips the phone over, takes the battery out and shoves it in the duffle. He thinks. He should do something. About his dad. About him being dead. He realizes then, just how fucked he is, going in and out of jail on the same day his dad’s killed. There’s no coming home after this, no moving backward. He has gone too far, done something he can never take back. He’s seen crime shows—the killers never get away with it, no matter how hard they try, and those guys are a hell of a lot smarter than Tyler.

He backs out of the office, through the house to the kitchen, out the side-door and into the garage. He chooses the least-remarkable car, a silver Hyundai that the housekeeper uses when she goes grocery shopping--even the employees have to represent the family in a positive manner. The key feels like a foreign object in his hand; his body has forgotten the muscle memory of putting it into the ignition. He’s jerky, backing out of the garage, but then it comes back to him, hands and feet, responding to the road under him. 

He has a plan. Maybe not a good plan, but it’s all he’s got.


	21. Jordie

The first thing Tyler does when he unwraps the pre-paid phone he buys at the convenience store (not the closest one to his father’s house, but not by much) is call Jordie. Sid…Sid is probably some werewolf bad-ass that Taylor promises will come in with a veritable army, but he’s far away, too fucking far. If Jagr starts looking lively, some enterprising dumb-ass might put a bullet in Jamie’s head, and that is absolutely. Not. Acceptable. 

Jordie, Jordie was getting on the next plane, and Tyler has no idea what time it was when he called him, no idea where Jordie was or when the last flight out for the night is, or how early he could get to Dallas would be, but he is a hell of a lot closer than Sid.

“Hello?” Jordie answers, voice wary. 

Tyler sits alone in his car in the far corner of a Wal-Mart parking lot, trying to compose his thoughts, trying to make some sense. He needs to sleep. Needs to eat something better than the fast-food he picked up on the way here.

“Hey. It’s uh, it’s Tyler. I called you last night. About Jamie.”

Jordie’s voice goes sharp, incredulous and annoyed. “What the hell. I tried calling you back. It was some hardware store. They said some crazy homeless guy broke in the night before and used their phone.”

Tyler wants to groan but he stops himself. But. “But they said they were in Dallas, right? Jordie, where did I get your brother’s name and your name and your number from if I didn’t get it from him.”

There’s just silence on the other end. 

“Where are you now?” Tyler asks.

“The police station. I’m trying to give them a story some crazy homeless guy called and told me, but nobody has had time for it yet.” He sounds exhausted himself, keyed up and frustrated.

Tyler shakes his head, flaps his hand around. “No, don’t. You can’t talk to the cops. This isn’t. That wouldn’t help Jamie. Can I meet you? In person?”

There is another prolonged pause. Tyler bites his lip to shut himself up. It works for about ten seconds.

“Look. I’m not a crazy person.” That shouldn’t feel like such a lie. “But there is shit going on that the cops don’t know. Can’t know. Look. Give me fifteen minutes and if you don’t believe me, then whatever. Do whatever you want.”

Jordie sighs. “It doesn’t look like I’m gonna be a priority here anytime soon. Where do you want to meet?” 

Tyler tries to remember, the places he knows. “Uh, Cafe Brazil on Cedar Springs.” He’s not even sure what day of the week it is; the kind of guys he hung out with might eat there, but sure as hell not this early in the morning.

“Cafe Brazil. Cedar Springs. I’m on my way.”

Tyler sags against the car’s steering wheel, breathes out his relief. 

“Thank you,” he tells Jordie, meaning it with every fiber of his being. “Thank you, Thank you.”

==============

Tyler has no idea what Jordie looks like. He gets to the restaurant, and scans the people, looking for the closest thing to Jamie he can find, but nobody looks right.

“I’m meeting someone here,” he tells the waitress who greets him at the door. “I uh, his name is Jordie?”

She nods like she was expecting him, leads him over to some brown-haired guy with a bushy beard and worried eyes. He’s kind of a bulky guy, wearing a jacket that looks a little warm, even for this time of year. Maybe it’s colder wherever he was when he got the call. Didn’t compensate for Dallas weather.

“Are you Tyler?” the guy asks, and Tyler is so damn grateful. 

“Yeah. Yeah. Jordie?”

The man nods and the waitress hands Tyler a menu. It would look weird to not order, and he’s starving again (still) so he flips it open, points randomly to something on the migas page, another thing on the pancakes and waffles page. “And a coffee. And some pie. Whatever the pie is. And um, whatever is ready soonest, you can bring it out as soon as it’s done.”

Jordie watches him with narrowed eyes.

“You are not fucking with me to get a free meal are you?” he asks, and Tyler snorts.

“I got it.”

“So, Jamie,” Jordie says, getting things back on track real quick.

Tyler swallows, trying to figure out where to start. This is not a conversation for the public, but he doesn’t think Jordie is ready to be alone with him.

He gets up and goes to Jordie’s side of the booth. Nobody is behind him. “Scoot over,” Tyler says, and Jordie does, but he looks like he still doubts Tyler’s grip on reality.

“Look,” Tyler starts, “I wasn’t lying about the cage-fighting bullshit. It’s. It is really bad. They are really hurting him. All of them. There’s just. There’s more to it.”

Jordie shakes his head. “Okay, start from the beginning. How do you know Jamie? How do you know where he is.”

Tyler can feel the color rising on his cheeks, because this is gonna sound so stupid, laid out like this.

“He wasn’t cooperating. I don’t. Don’t know exactly, but they grabbed me off the street, not far from here, and they shoved me in a cell with him, and they. They hurt me if he didn’t do what they wanted, like they wanted, and Jamie bent over backwards trying to keep them happy. To keep me safe.”

Jordie looks him over, and Tyler feels naked, feels raw and exposed. 

“That sounds like Jamie.”

The coffee comes then, and Tyler wraps his hands around it, inhales the smell of it. The waitress puts a plate of pancakes down and Tyler has one folded in half and in his mouth before he remembers that silverware is a thing that exists.

“How’d you get out?” Jordie asks, and Tyler chews and swallows to buy a little time.

“He uh. Made an opportunity. He couldn’t get himself out, so he made it so I could. He got fucked up, so I could get help. So I could call you and Taylor’s brother. She’s um. Not a fighter. But a prisoner. Her brother’s coming, but he’s far away, and shit is gonna go down there soon. Like in a couple hours they’re gonna find out there’s no reinforcements coming. I don’t know what the guards will do then.”

“Tyler,” Jordie says like Tyler is trying his patience. “This is why we should be going to the police.”

Tyler shakes his head, stuffs another pancake down his gullet. “No. There are things there that the police can’t deal with. It just. It’ll be bad for Jamie if they do.”

Jordie looks serious and regretful, but solidly determined. “I think you need to explain to me, just what the problem is, or I’m gonna have to bring you with me to the police station, whether you want to come or not.”

Tyler hangs his head. Fuck. There seems to be an unspoken rule about not talking about werewolf club, and he’s about to break it. 

“Come with me,” Tyler says, sliding out of the booth.

“Huh?”

Tyler grabs the last of his pancakes and leads the way to the men’s room. It’s a no-stalls lock-the-door kind of setup, and it probably looks sketchy as hell, two guys going in together, especially in this neighborhood. Tyler steps behind Jordie as they go in, putting himself between Jordie and the door.

“Look,” Tyler says, trying one more time to avoid talking about the big secret. “They did things to him. He did things. It is going to be a nightmare if the police are involved.”

“What things?” Jordie growls, at the end of his patience. 

Okay. Okay. Tyler can do this. 

“Don’t freak out,” he warns. Takes a breath and wills the change.

Jordie watches him, raises his eyebrows as the moment stretches.

“Wait,” Tyler begs. Takes another breath and pushes, focuses. Shit. He tries to growl, but it comes out more like a throat-clearing noise.

“Tell me where Jamie is,” Jordie asks, and Tyler knows the sound of someone trying to talk down a friend who is too drunk or high to interact with any other way. “Where’s my brother, Tyler.”

“I am not crazy,” Tyler growls through gritted teeth, flexes his fingers, clenches his jaws.

“Holy shit!” Jordie squeaks, a high-pitched noise a guy his size should never make. He steps back, stumbles over the toilet and Tyler darts his hand out, grabs Jordie before he can fall into the urinal. He gets him on his feet and takes a breath, draws back to himself, to being a person, to being himself.

“What…what.” Jordie stammers, eyes wild still. 

“They did this to Jamie. Jamie did it to me so I could get out.”

There is a bang on the door and they both jump. 

“Come on out of there!” a voice calls, “One person at a time in the washrooms!” 

“Shit.” 

Tyler opens the door, “Sorry, sorry. Just needed to tell him something.” He ducks under the manager’s disapproving gaze, goes back to the table. Migas. Fuck yeah, he’d forgotten what real hot tasty food was like.

Jordie comes over a little slower, a little more wary now and not just because of Tyler’s questionable mental state. He sits across the table from Tyler, watching him eat.

“Was that…” Jordie asks.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re…Jamie is…”

“Yeah.” 

Jordie stares in shock as Tyler plows through the migas and the rosemary potatoes, orders another slice of pie when the first one is so damn good.

Tyler finally throws about sixty bucks on the table and stands up. He doesn’t know what else he can do, if Jordie doesn’t believe him still.

“Look. I gotta. Jamie is in a fuckton of trouble, and I gotta go do what I can do. I don’t think it’ll work if I’m alone, but I’m gonna try anyway. I need your help. You’re the _only one_ who can help me.”

Jordie swallows and nods. “Yeah. I’m with you.” He climbs out of the booth, looking like he’s still shaky. 

“You have a car?” Tyler asks. 

“Yeah. You have a plan?” Jordie replies as they go to the parking lot. Tyler pops the trunk on the car he drove here, takes the duffle out and tosses the keys on the ground beside the driver’s seat. Jordie watches him with wide eyes.

Tyler raises his eyebrows, and Jordie pulls out his own keys, leads him to a rental car. “Okay,” says Tyler when they’re in motion. “We need a bigger vehicle. There are sixteen people that need to come out of there.” He can’t figure out if that counts him and Jordie riding, or not. “Something that’ll be easy to load into, like a U-Haul van with the door on the side and back.”

Jordie passes Tyler his phone, “Map app is on the home screen,” he says. Tyler messes with it for a moment and the directions voice says _turn left on Throckmorton,_ and Jordie does. 

“I need a gun,” Jordie says, and Tyler looks over. He hadn’t even really thought about that possibility. 

“There should be a shop,” Tyler says, because this _is_ Texas after all. 

“So I’m what. Getaway driver?” 

“Yeah. I thought. If you said no, we’d try to steal one of theirs, but this would be a hell of a lot quicker.”

He lays out the basics of the complex, the driveway going in, the big garage, the way the wires to the cell doors are across the ceiling, protected by a fragile shell of conduit. 

They stop at U-Haul, leave Jordie’s rental car in the parking lot and switch to the van. Tyler can see him glance in the rear-view mirror once, probably kissing his credit-rating goodbye, but it can’t be helped; there just isn’t time. 

The gun-shop doesn’t open for another twenty-minutes, so they sit in the van outside of it. 

“So your plan,” Jordie says, like it’s too stupid to believe, “Is to sneak up, in broad daylight, climb up on the roof and cut the electricity coming in. You know they probably have a generator, right?”

Tyler nods. “I know. I know. But it won’t be instant, right? If just one of the prisoners gets out of their cell while the power is down, the guards will all go there, and I can hopefully mess some other stuff up, take the cells down again or be a distraction so whoever got out can get more of them out. The guards called for backup, so they are spread thinner than they used to be. It won’t take much.”

Jordie shakes his head. “Okay, first of all, you’re not gonna make it to the roof. That’s just dumb.” He looks around, through the upper edge of the van’s windshield. Points off to the side. “See that thing on the side of the utility pole? That’s the transformer. It shouldn’t be too hard to find the most-likely one that powers this complex.”

A man walks up to the shop’s door, peers at Jordie and Tyler sitting in the van, but goes ahead and unlocks the door, goes inside. The sign doesn’t flip from Closed to Open though, and there’s another five minutes so they wait.

“You get as close as you dare, and listen for the shot. I’ll take out the transformer and start driving for the gate. I’ll shoot up the front, cause a little more distraction, give you guys a little more help.”

Tyler shakes his head. “No. I mean, the transformer idea is awesome, because I wouldn’t have even known what I was looking for up on that roof. But you have to stay back. You’re not… If I get you killed, Jamie…it will ruin him. You won’t heal if you get shot. It’ll be okay. It’ll have to be okay.”

Jordie is quiet for a moment and then he opens his door. “Fine,” he says, “Wait here while I buy the gun.”

It takes about half an hour, and Tyler sits, squirming with impatience. 

Jordie comes back out with a long rifle case. 

“There’s a waiting period for pistols, but I could take this with me,” he says. 

Tyler nods. “There’s just one more place we gotta go.” He’s already found the address and put it in Jordie’s phone.

Jordie pulls out of the parking lot. Tyler watches the little dot on the map, moving closer to hell. 

The map app tells them to pull in; Tyler points to a parking spot in front of Ray’s Sharpening.

“I’ll be right back,” he promises Jordie, grabs five twenties out of the side-pocket of his bag. How expensive can an ax be, anyway? He goes in and the thing he wants is there, on a rack with five of it’s buddies, bright yellow handle with a lightening bolt crossed-out on the side, gleaming oiled metal head, the blade still painted virgin red. The sign says forty bucks, so Tyler throws all the money on the counter, figures the leftover can be an apology for the door.

He comes back to the van, climbs in and Jordie’s seat is empty. 

“Hey Tyler?”

Jordie is in the back, the rifle out of the case, the stock up on his shoulder. Tyler’s been shot three times now, but this looks like a serious piece of equipment. 

“Yeah?”

“How’d you know the guards called for backup? How do you know there’s no reinforcements coming?”

Shit.

He licks his lips, tries to figure out his chances. What to say that’ll make Jordie trust him again, or at least put the gun down and help, whether or not he likes or trusts Tyler.

“I found out. Somebody I knew, from before, was involved.”

He holds up his hands, reaches slow into the duffle with one of them, keeping his eye on Jordie the whole time.

“This phone. It has the numbers of the complex on it, for sure. Maybe another one too. Wherever he’s getting mercenariness from.”

Jordie watches him, letting Tyler talk. 

“If I don’t make it out of there with Jamie, if we don’t come out, you gotta figure out a way to use this to burn these guys. You can’t trust the authorities. He knows…he knew guys at the Pentagon. Generals. Serious dudes. You can’t let this get covered up.” He winces. “But y’know, don’t let anybody link you to the phone either, because the guy who had it is dead now.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jordie asks, “Why are you risking your life? Why are you going back there?”

Tyler laughs, nearly hysterical. “If there was anybody. Anybody at all I could let do this instead, I would be on a plane to Cabo right now.” He gets control of himself. “Jamie. He’d do it for me. He fought and bled and killed for me. I can’t. Can’t let them kill him.”

Jordie stares at him, like he can read through Tyler’s skin and see the truth on his bones. 

He finally brings the rifle down, slides it back into the case. Moves back up between the seats and behind the wheel.

“What’s the ax for?” he asks as he pulls the van back onto the road. 

Tyler flips it so he can see the non-conductive sticker on the haft. 

“For electrical wires inside of conduit.” He’s thinking though, that it’ll be easier, to kill guards from three feet away than to do it with his own claws, his own teeth. The idea makes him feel green, makes the feast in his stomach roil with revulsion. 

They turn another corner and Tyler can see it, the complex, looking so much smaller by light of day, so shabby and dull. 

_I’m coming,_ he thinks. _Jamie, I’m coming._


	22. The best laid plans

Jamie drowses in the chair, head hanging down, the constant pain quieting into a background ache. He’s not sure, but he thinks he’s healing, slowly. He worked the gag out of his mouth, and he can feel the point of a new tooth growing in the pit where the old one was before it was pulled. He tried the bonds, will try again after he rests for a while, but they’re solid, no give at all to the thick bands of leather.

He waits, for death to come, for Taylor’s brother to get here first. Tyler at least, Tyler is safe. His father must have him by now, all the security that wealth and status can buy, wrapped around him again. He dreams about Tyler spread out on white sheets, but even in his mind, Tyler is scruffy and skinny, not the pretty-boy that was first thrown in with him. He can barely remember, barely imagine, the Tyler that should be.

There’s a noise, the bzzt of fluorescent lighting stuttering. Jamie opens his eyes, and for a moment he thinks he’s blind, thinks he’s dead, the darkness so thick he can’t see anything at all. A werewolf snarls, guns fire. There’s a yelp and a rising howl, multiple voices, a pack.

Footsteps go past, shoes on cement, different than the boots the guards wear. He tries to speak, but his throat is dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The sound of guns echo down the hallways, three-round bursts and then full auto. The guards aren’t firing to slow, to injure, to preserve the value of their targets anymore. Those are stopping patterns, the sounds of people doing their damn best to kill other people. The guns stop after a few seconds though. Either all their targets are down, or the guards are.

Somewhere nearby, a motor chugs to life, the lights flicker and come on again. Hilary is at the door, staring at him through the bars. 

“Hold on, Jamie. Hold on.” She slams it with her shoulder, but the lock holds. “Tyler!” she calls, and Jamie must be hearing things; that or she’s confused. “Tyler, bring that ax!” 

Jamie doesn’t immediately recognize the man on the other side of the grate, with his buzzed-short hair and a soft line of stubble covering his jaw. The eyes though; he knows them. Tyler. Tyler shouldn’t be here. Hilary shouldn’t have led Tyler here.

Tyler hefts the yellow-handled ax he’s carrying. Hilary flinches back, hands guarding her face as he swings, the sharp blade providing a smaller contact area than her shoulder had. The latch gives; the gate swings open, bangs off the wall and rolls slowly back towards closed. Tyler is there then, short chops cutting through the leather that holds Jamie. He falls, and Tyler catches him. 

“Who else?” Tyler asks as he hands Jamie off to Hilary, as she hefts his useless body over her shoulder.

“I haven’t seen Jagr,” she says, “Dillon’s drugged. The vamps…I dunno.”

“Go,” Tyler says, “Get him to the van.”

“Tyler,” Hilary says, and Jamie can hear it in her voice, how easy it would be to leave those guys behind. Jagr, for the harm he’s done to so many of them, for being the reason so many were taken, so many of them died. It would be easy to forget the vampires, to walk away on them for being so different, for isolating themselves from the rest, for being not-were. 

“Go,” Tyler says, resolute, and she settles Jamie more comfortably over her shoulders and goes.

Jamie tries to protest, tries to complain, but she’s already moving. The garage he came in through is shadowed, the sunlight beyond the door so bright it makes halos in his vision. 

“Jamie?” a voice calls. It’s not possible. His brother. Jordie can’t be here, coming out of a van, dust still settling around its wheels, a rifle on his shoulder. Hilary snarls, shifts her weight back, and Jamie flails wildly, gets a hand on her arm. 

“No. No. He’s m’brother.”

Jordie comes up wary and wide-eyed, and Hilary is tense but she doesn’t tear his throat out, so that’s good. Jordie hustles back to open the van’s side door, walking in a side-step so he can keep the complex in his sight.

The sun burns Jamie’s eyes, and Hilary stumbles like she’s half-blind as well. “Oh Jesus, Jamie.” Jordie sounds horrified. “Jesus, what did they do to you? We’ve got to get you to a hospital…”

“Tyler,” Jamie finally manages to say, “Help Tyler. Help him.” Hilary lays him in the van, and he groans as all his wounds re-settle to a new angle of gravity.

Jordie makes a noise that sounds like he understands. A couple seconds later he fires the rifle, its single shot clean and sharp. The cop that Jamie used to be tries to calculate, how trigger-happy the guards felt they could be. The muffling properties of that much cement. The area, it must be industrial; the businesses here would use lots of machinery, have a lot of noise. Even the sound of a single shot might not attract enough attention for the police to be called.

There’s a rush of activity, the twins bringing Dillon in, Shannon and Taylor and the other wolves who had been in the neighboring cells, ragged knots of survivors. He counts ten including himself, bleeding, limping but alive. It looks like everyone but Taylor has blood on them—their own or the guards, he can’t tell.

“Stay here.” Jamie thinks Hilary is telling Jordie. “Watch the doors. You two, come on, we’re going back,” she says to the twins, and the three go. Jamie blinks the tears out of his eyes. Taylor is holding his hand. 

“He was okay,” she says. “I saw him and he was okay. I think. I think the last of the guards are down.”

They wait, the rumble of the engine and the drip of blood filling the silence. Somewhere, a siren wails and Jamie hopes they aren’t close, aren’t coming here. 

 

===========

Jagr isn’t in any of the cells, isn’t in the medical exam room or any of the rooms down the hall they found Jamie in. Phillipe or Roussel either. Tyler steps over the body of another guard, this one torn open, his ribs spread like a bowl, heart and lungs splattered ten feet down the hall. He tries not to look, so glad that he’s only had to kill one, that the ax made it distant. He can still feel the thrum of it, the impact going up the fiberglass handle, the way the man’s face crumpled as his chest caved in, cut through so deep the ax grated against the wall on the other side of him when Tyler pulled it out of his body.

He turns the corner, into some sort of holding area, a bunch of small cages, too small for a man to stand up in, along one wall, some long boxes beside them. They look like coffins, if coffins were metal and blocky and had breathing holes on the short ends. Three of them are locked too, two padlocks on each one. There’s no reason to lock an empty box, and he swings the ax. The lock doesn’t break, but the bracket that held it to the coffin sure does, snapping off clean. He hits the next lock and then flips back the lid. There’s Jagr, pale and covered in blood, near-floating in it, pooled in the bottom of the box so deep it goes from corner to corner.

There’s a noise behind him, and he turns, ready to fight, but it’s just the twins. 

“Hils! Here!” one calls, “He’s here!”

“Get him,” Tyler says, pointing at Jagr, and goes to work on the next box. Phillipe. Pale and still, he doesn’t twitch when the lid comes open. _God damn it vampires,_ he thinks. He’s not even sure if he can take them out like this, out into the sunlight. Fuck. 

One of the brothers slams the lid back down over Phillipe, lifts one end of the box and drags it. “I’ve got him! Here! Take Rouss!” Tyler smashes the locks on Roussel’s box, even as the other twin starts taking it away, looks inside just to make sure they’re not leaving a man behind. Hilary grabs the other end and they move faster. That leaves him with Jagr, and he pulls the old wolf out of his box. Dude is truly shot to shit, a dozen wounds half-healed.

“No,” Jagr groans, and Tyler doesn’t have time to listen to him. He can’t get him up on his shoulder with only one free hand, and the others have gone already. There’s nobody else, so he drops his ax, gets Jagr half-leaning against the box and hefts him up.

“No,” Jagr says again, and Tyler has no idea where he’s getting the strength to talk. “Promised. One good deed. One good. Then I can die.”

Tyler hikes Jagr up a little higher, hands slipping on the blood, moves a little faster down the hall. 

“I didn’t promise you shit,” Tyler says between his teeth. He’s running on fumes, on the ghost of adrenaline, glad he ate because he’s had to heal another bullet hole and a rifle-butt to the head since then. He doesn’t know how Jamie did it, how he endured and kept facing them, kept standing up to them, even though it hurts so bad. 

He gets to the garage and the main doors are up, the U-Haul looking ridiculously bright out there with its white paint, the colorful splashes of color on the side. Jordie is there, holding the side door open for him, rifle at the ready. Tyler can see the corners of the vamp crates there, and he picks up speed, as close to a jog as he can get with the heavier man on his back. He gets to the door, throws Jagr in and climbs inside. It is packed, the smell of blood filling the close area, people leaning against each other, sitting with their backs to the bare metal of the van’s interior. Shannon is in the passenger seat, and Tyler dumps Jagr on the floor, lets Jordie pull the door shut behind him.

“Jor?” Jamie sounds confused, unsure, like he can feel the temporary separation from his brother.

“Yeah, Jame. I’m here.” Jordie tries to pass the rifle back, gets it tangled in the steering wheel and Tyler climbs over people to stand between the seats, to help him get it out of the way.

The three round burst from the garage door is a shock, the tak-tak-tak of it making every person in the van flinch. Jordie’s eyes go wide and then he’s falling.

“No! No, no no!” Tyler grabs him before he can slide to the ground, growls and grabs him by the front of his jacket. Drags him into the van with brute force, dropping him to the floor between the seats as he jumps behind the wheel, pulls the door shut, puts it into drive. 

“Jordie!” Jamie screams, and Tyler wants to be sick. He should have done something. Should have been the last one in. Should have told one of the other wolves to do it. Should have told every fucking one of them to take care of Jordie. 

There’s a weak cough from the floorboards as Tyler pulls out of the cement factory’s gate. He spares a glance down to see how bad. God, can they drop Jordie at a hospital? Three bullets into a human’s back, oh god that has to be bad. He’s not gonna heal. Too close to this full moon for the change to take, according to Jagr. Not gonna make it to the next one.

“Shit,” Jordie groans, and Jamie is climbing over the people in his way, frantic to get to his brother. 

Tyler doesn’t know where to go, so he drives, heads towards Deep Ellum, because there’s a Baylor medical tower over that way—there has to be an ER, right? 

“Jamie, get it off,” Jordie groans, and Jamie is there, is pulling his jacket open, hands going under it, searching for a wound to put pressure on.

Tyler happens to look down again as Jamie sits up straighter, his hands going still, eyes wide and uncomprehending. 

“You’re. Jor, you brought my fucking vest?”

Jordie laughs, and it sounds painful but not deadly. There’s the rasp of velcro tearing open as Jamie helps him out of the straps.

“I’m okay,” Jordie gasps. “Hurts. But I think the vest got it.”

Jamie makes a noise of aggravation and relief and Tyler thinks maybe that’s what brotherhood is. Jamie pulls Jordie into a hug and Jordie complains about dumb-ass little brothers going off alone and getting themselves in trouble.

Tyler, fuck, he doesn’t know. He turns and drives for the highway, heart pounding with adrenaline overload. He doesn’t know what else to do, so he turns to the highway and drives.


	23. Fugitives

Jamie rides on the floor of the van, Jordie holding him up against his chest, despite how leaning on the center console has to be hurting his bruised back. He looks up, at Tyler driving, his amber eyes focusing on the road, on keeping to exactly the speed limit, on the rear-view mirror every fifteen seconds or so. He cut his hair and shaved his beard down to stubble in the half a day since Jamie saw him. He hadn’t realized Tyler was getting so thin, losing so much weight. He should have taken better care of him, he thinks. He takes the hollows of Tyler’s collarbones and the shadows under his eyes as his own personal failure.

“Hey. I need to change out of these clothes,” Tyler says as he pulls onto the highway, as the rough industrial roads give way to smooth whitetop. His light-colored shirt is covered in blood from shoulders to waist, red turning brown down the leg of his jeans. If a cop spots them, happens to look twice—it won’t be good. “We need. Need to plan where we’re going. I’m. I don’t fucking know.”

He sounds young, and lost, and Jamie is so fucking proud of him for getting this far. 

“Is Sid…” Taylor sounds scared, and the van weaves a little as Tyler looks back at her. “Did they get him?”

“What? Oh. No. He’s okay. I mean he was. He is as far as I know.” He steadies the wheel, glances in the rear-view again.

“I called him, and he’s on his way. The number was good. He’s coming. He was in Alaska. Looking for you, I think. Just. Just too far. Too much time.”

Taylor takes a relieved breath, braces her hand against the ribs of the van and rests the other hand on her stomach. Jamie isn’t an expert, but he didn’t think she should be showing so soon. Maybe it’s a werewolf thing. He hopes to god they didn’t do something to her, to the baby. 

“There’s. Shannon, that bag by your feet, there’s a phone in there. Pass it back to her?” Tyler asks.

She passes the burner phone to Jamie and he hands it off to a man whose name he thinks is Trevor—one of the guys from the other end of the row. 

They all sit and pretend they’re not forced to listen in as Taylor dials Sid’s number, her hand shaking as she waits for him to pick up. Her face crumples as he must answer, her stoic exterior falling and the scared young girl finally hearing from her family coming through. She cries his name into the phone, “Sid, Sid.” Listens as he says something, lost in the rumble of the road underneath them. “Tyler came. He turned off the fences. He got us out…I’m. Yeah. I’m safe. I’m safe… I don’t know where we’re going… How long? We. Jamie and Tyler will take care of us. They’ll take care of me.” Dillon, looking more awake by the minute, steadies her as the van sways around a curve in the road. “Call me,” She says, “When you’re closer. I don’t. I don’t know where we’re going. Okay. Okay. I love you, Sid.”

“Hey,” Ryan calls when Taylor is done, holding out his hand. “Pass that here next; my wife has to be going nuts. I need to call her.”

“Ryan,” Jamie says. “Look. I’m not going to stop anybody from using the phone, but if they got your ID when they took you. If they know where your family is and your family isn’t a bunch of werewolves, it’s a bad idea to call them. There could be surveillance on the line, and linking this phone to people we love might put them in legal trouble later, if things go sideways. Let’s wait, just a little, until we have a better idea of what’s going to happen.”

Ryan grimaces and waves the phone back to Jamie. 

Jamie does another mental head-count when the phone is back in his hand. Fifteen. Counting Jordie. That can’t. Can’t be right. Shit. “How many. Who’d we lose?”

“Sneed,” one of the less-familiar voices says. Ryan, Jamie thinks. “He was down on our end. Robidas used to be across from me. The lights went out and about half of us in the cells were able to get through the wire and the fence before the generator came on. They were closest when the guards came around the corner. They were shooting to kill.”

“Shaw, when Tyler got out,” Hilary says, just in case Jamie missed it.

Tyler presses his lips together and Jamie hopes he’s not blaming himself for the deaths. Three out of eighteen. It’s a loss. It could have been so much worse though. Could have been all of them. This is…god, the best they could have hoped for, barring Sid coming with the cavalry. 

“Jagr,” one of the guys in the back says. “He’s not looking so good.” They shift around a little back there, trying to make him more comfortable, but there’s not much room.

“Phillipe and Roussel are in the boxes. I don’t know what’s normal for vampires,” Tyler says. “They weren’t moving. I brought them anyway.”

“They never talked much,” Shannon says. “Not with anybody but each other.”

“We’ll wait until nightfall,” Jamie says. “I don’t want to expose them to sunlight until we know for sure.”

“They took them out of their cell about an hour after you fought Jagr,” one of the twins says. “Said they’d shoot them both to pieces if Rouss didn’t come out peacefully, and when he did they took him away. They came back for the little one. Said they’d slit Rouss’s wrists and let him bleed out if he didn’t go with them. I don’t know where they took them, or what they did. They put Dillon in that cell when the vamps were gone.”

“Jamie.” Tyler sounds shaky. “Jamie, where do I go?” The kid needs a plan, needs somewhere to take them before he goes to pieces. 

“Your dad’s place?”

Tyler swallows hard. “We can’t. I. I killed him there.”

Jamie gawks up at him, tries to figure out how the hell that could have happened. _Why_ it would have happened. 

“What?”

“I killed him. He. This was one of his projects. I don’t know. Like what the details were. But he was talking to the guards. About killing most of you. Taking the rest somewhere else. A second facility.”

That. Okay, that’s significant news, and Jamie knows it’ll be important. For right now, they have more immediate needs.

“Who’ll find the body?”

Tyler shakes his head, hands white-knuckled on the wheel. Jamie reaches up, puts his hand on Tyler’s thigh.

“You’re okay. I trust you. If you killed him, I’m sure you didn’t see any other way.”

Tyler licks his lips, nods. 

“Tyler, who’ll find the body?”

“Rosa. The house-keeper. I closed his office door. And I’ve got his phone. So nobody will go in for a while. But he’ll start to smell. Shit. I should have…”

“It’s okay,” Jamie says, thinking. “Would she listen to you? If you told her to take the day off?” 

Tyler mulls it over for a worryingly long time. 

“I’ve been missing for almost two months. She doesn’t know I was back.”

“Okay,” Jamie says. “It’ll be okay. You call her. Tell her you’re coming home and you’d like to talk to your dad alone. Tell her to take the day.” He looks up through the side windows, but all he sees are the occasional shadows of overhead signage. 

“Relax. Pull off somewhere quiet.” He looks back, gestures for the phone to be passed up to them again. They’ll have to dump it when they leave, get a new one. Hopefully they’ll be better situated then. 

Tyler checks the mirrors, changes lanes, decelerates. A worn gas-station sign passes beside them as they slow to a stop.

“It’s okay that you sound shaky,” Jamie says. “Use it. Let it work for you.” Tyler puts the van in park but doesn’t turn the engine off.

Tyler powers up his dad’s cell for just long enough to get the number off of it and put it into the burner. He cradles the phone in his hands for a second, and Jamie can see him trying to pull his old self around him like a costume.

And then he sits up straighter, a fake, brittle smile on his lips. Dials quick and listens to it ring. 

“Rosa? Hi! Hey! It’s Tyler. Hey, I just. I talked to my dad. I’m coming home today. It’s— yeah, it’s been a strange couple of months. No, I’m fine, I’m okay. He’s kind of pissed at me; you know how he gets. I was. No, I wouldn’t talk to him if I were you. You just. Go ahead and take the day off. Okay. Okay. You too. Thanks.”

He swallows hard and hands the phone back to Jamie. 

“He doesn’t…didn’t like awkward. He would have been a dick if he noticed she’d overheard our family drama. And wouldn’t have been pissed if she’d managed to not be there for that. She’s gonna say she was out getting groceries if he asks her about it.”

There is a collective sigh, relief going through the van. 

“There’s a shirt in that bag,” Tyler says, and Shannon digs for it, passes it over. Tyler strips his bloody one off, and Jamie holds a hand up for it. There’s a bullet hole in it, and a lot of blood. There’s a pink scar, on Tyler’s chest just under his collar-bone, a white one low on his left side. Tyler has been shirtless for a month, and Jamie has never seen those scars.

Tyler pulls the new shirt on and looks around, puts the van into drive again.

=========

They say you can’t come home again, and Tyler really wishes they had any other option. They take it slow. Jamie switches places with Shannon, Jordie’s jacket over his bare and bloody chest. 

They drive past the house once to make sure there’s no cops in the driveway beyond the gates. Tyler punches in the access code, listens to the metal rattle of the chain pulling them open. 

The garage side-door is open, and they leave Shannon behind the wheel while Tyler goes in, Hilary beside him, making sure the door to the office is still closed, that nobody has been there.

Shannon parks the van and the rag-tag bunch of survivors stumble out, dragging the vamp-boxes and carrying Jagr. 

“Okay, are we going to hide that we’ve been here?” Jordie asks, standing and wincing, moving like a man much older than he is. Tyler looks to Jamie, because he seems to have a lot better planning skills than Tyler does.

Jamie looks over the bloody, messy, half-dressed not-quite-humans and shrugs. “I don’t see how we’re going to hide it.” 

Tyler shrugs too and leads them in, trying to think of what everyone needs. “There’s uh, kitchen’s here. I’ll go grab some steaks out of the deep freeze in a minute. Um. Clothes, showers, that’s upstairs.”

Jamie kind of half-collapses into a chair. Tyler leads the way upstairs to his room, introducing himself to the guys he’s barely seen before as they go. Everybody looks about as shell-shocked as he feels. He grabs some clothes out of his closet, lays them down his bed from the ones that used to fit tight on him to the ones that used to be loose. They’d all flop now, he thinks, with the weight he’s lost, all that hard-won gym muscle gone. His t-shirts and club clothes might not fit the personal style of everybody, but better than the bloody tatters they’re wearing. Taylor and Shannon are going to be swimming in Tyler’s things, but he doesn’t feel right breaking into his mother’s old room. He won’t. He can’t imagine seeing someone else wearing her clothes.

“Anything you want out of this room, help yourselves,” he says. He’s not sure what he’ll do if someone picks out of his dad’s closet, the lingering smells of cologne on them. “Just this room, okay?”

There are three other showers up here, not counting the one he won’t have anybody use. The tankless water-heater will get a serious workout. The twins (there’s a Marc and a Jared and Tyler would be fucked if he had to say which was which) go into one bathroom and all three girls into another. Tyler isn’t going to speculate whether they take turns with the shower or not. He totally understands the need to not be alone, to be touched and held and maybe have someone wash his back. They were all in the cells before he got there, and they didn’t have a partner in there with them. He doesn’t know what he’d have done without Jamie’s breath under his fingertips when he slept. Even just a few rooms away, he misses Jamie. Needs him. It’s not okay, and he goes to raid the deep freezer and pantry instead of going straight back to Jamie’s side. He feels like if he sits down, if he lets himself stop, then he’ll have enough time to let it sink in, to let it be real. 

The television by the fridge is on, Fox4News chattering the local happenings, the background noise strange and grating after so long with nothing but the other prisoners to listen to.

Dad had shit for bulk-food, and Tyler carries back an armload of frozen dinners, meals that Rosa had made and packed for dad and Tyler. Makes a second trip and brings back a dozen shrink-wrapped steaks. He starts the first microwave-load cooking, leans against the counter and watches the containers spin. Holy shit he’s tired. Not so much his body. If he had to, if they needed him to, he could probably make it through his old workout routine no problem. His head, though… The bright noon-day sun shining in through the windows makes a mockery of how tired he is. Still, this isn’t going to be nearly enough food. He gets the biggest pot out of the cabinet, starts some water boiling. There are a couple boxes of dried pasta he can cook up in one oversize batch. 

“How long are we staying?” Jordie asks, and Tyler is glad someone did.

“Nightfall, I think,” Jamie says. “We need to check on the vamps. Get cleaned up, hose out the van, figure out what we’re going to do with the body and do it. Leave while it’s dark. We need to have a meeting or something. When everyone is cleaned up and fed.”

Jamie licks his lips, and the weight of this looks heavy. Tyler gets him a Gatorade, and Jamie’s eyes light up at the taste of it. 

Fifteen people to feed. Tyler knows he’s shitty at this, but he’s trying. He’s got some weight-gain powder in a cabinet, and he pulls down the blender, starts mixing up shakes. He gives Jamie and Jordie each one and then lines up some more down the counter for the first people out of the showers. He can’t. Can’t even imagine drinking one right now. There’s a smell, like his father’s cologne and shit and rot, so faint that he keeps thinking he’s imagining it. Nobody else says anything; nobody else acts like they notice.

Jagr has been propped up in the corner and Tyler puts a straw in his glass. He approaches the old wolf carefully. It’s weird, seeing the boogey-man laying limp and bloody in his kitchen. Jagr can’t lift a hand to take it, so Tyler puts the straw between his lips. 

“Drink it, you stubborn asshole.”

Jagr does, eyes closed and cheeks hollowed. He gets half of it down, and Tyler leaves the glass with him.

The women come in then. Tyler’s smallest clothes fit Hilary pretty well, the sleeves snug around her biceps, the pants the right length and tight around the ass and thighs, but passable. She has his favorite snap-back cap on. She looks comfortable in Tyler’s clothes.

Shannon—Tyler had never realized how tiny she was, and his t-shirt sleeves hang to her elbows, the gym pants are rolled up around her ankles, her slim bare feet on the kitchen tile. Taylor is in the same state, with the added complication of her swollen belly under the shirt. Tyler feels guilty. There has to be something better, up in that unopened closet.

Shannon puts her hands on her hips, surveys the chaos in front of her. The pot of pasta chooses that moment to boil over and Tyler jumps for it but Shannon stops him with a touch to his wrist.

“You, out, before you hurt yourself.” She takes the lid off and turns the heat down, smoothly avoiding the steam and gushing froth. She goes through the kitchen like a thief, opening all the cabinets and drawers. Tyler just opened the door by the stove three times in a row, and he couldn’t say what was behind it with a gun to his head, but he gets the feeling she just memorized all the contents. 

Hilary watches like it’s a stage show, just for her. She sips her shake from a safe distance, and Taylor takes hers back to the table, sits across from Jamie and closes her eyes. 

Dillon is the next to wander down, clean and straining Tyler’s loosest shirt. He hesitates just a second too-long in Shannon’s range. She says “Here, open these” and puts a dozen cans in front of him and passes him the can-opener.

The big man looks flummoxed for a second, and it’s pretty hilarious to watch as he figures out the tool, so small-looking in his big hands. 

The kitchen gets more and more crowded. One of the twins sits on a vamp-boxes when they run out of chairs, and Shannon turns on him, snakes rising from the dark curls of her hair to hiss and sway. 

“Excuse the hell outta me,” he complains, but he gets up.

Trevor says “Don’t fuck with the cook, man.” A little wave of pushing goes through that half of the room, shoulders bumping, hands shoving chests. There’s not a hint of aggression in it, though. It’s as if they’re drunk on freedom, on being able to touch without tearing each other to pieces.

“Tyler,” Jamie says, and nods towards the garage door. “Can you help me find a hose? I want to spray down the van so it’ll have time to dry.”

He shouldn’t be dreading it, him and Jamie alone outside. He tries to tell that to his stomach, to the worried knots that roil tighter at the thought of it.

“Yeah. Sure,” he says, and offers Jamie his hand to help him out of the chair.


	24. Cleanup

Tyler licks his lower lip, gets back up from his chair and offers Jamie a hand getting out of his. He looks off, worried. It’s too much like when the guards came, but took someone else. Jamie can see he’s bracing himself for something horrible. 

The sun is bright, nearly noon, and Jamie watches Tyler step out into it like he’s never seen him before, the soft vulnerable line of his neck, his sturdy shoulders, capable hands. He’s pale, but alive, and alive is the important part.

There’s a raised flower-bed by the side-door of the van, and Tyler waves Jamie over to the low wall when they get out. “Here, sit down. You shouldn’t be. I can do this myself; you should go get a shower. Jordie can help you with the stairs.”

Jamie shakes his head, but he does sit down. He feels weak, slow, but very little of the pain has stayed with him. If anybody should have had dibs on the shower it was Tyler. He’s dirty under his clean clothes, flakes of dried blood on his wrist, spattered into his beard-line like constellations of darker freckles.

A hose hangs on a roller by the garage, and Jamie watches as Tyler unloops it, turns it on, checks the pressure of the sprayer.

With the water jet, the blood on the van floor doesn’t last too long. Tyler washes out smooth pink waves of it, watches the ripples fade paler with each pass. He’s focused on the small flicks of his wrist that chase out a stubborn stain, or keep the leading edge of the wave pointed towards the back door of the van. Too focused, too intent. A muscle in his cheek twitches, but he doesn’t seem aware of it.

“Tyler,” Jamie says, careful, gentle. “How you holding up?”

“I. I’m good. I’m fine.” 

He’s not. Not at all, and Jamie doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to make it better. 

“Hey,” Jamie says, soft. When Tyler was hurt, back in their cell, this is the tone he used. “C’mere. Sit with me a second.”

Tyler frowns, but he turns off the hose, leaves it lying on the driveway. He walks back to Jamie, his head down. Stands in front of him like he’s in trouble, like he’s expecting…god, Jamie doesn’t even know what, but whatever it is, Tyler would rather meet it on his feet than sitting down.

“Are you holding up okay?” Jamie asks. “You didn’t eat.” 

Tyler swallows and shakes his head. “No. I’m. I’m not fucking okay at all.” He winces, and Jamie stands up, reaches out. Tyler takes a step back, stumbles over the coils of hose but doesn’t fall. 

“I killed. I killed my dad here,” he breathes, the words catching dangerously in his throat. “I killed my dad, and all. All I can smell in there is. Is.” He turns and takes a step and goes to his knees, puking in the perfectly aligned petunias of a lower tier of the flower bed. 

Shit. Jamie follows him down, kneels beside him and cautiously puts a hand on his back. Tyler doesn’t flinch away this time. He holds himself rigid under Jamie’s palm, brittle and shaking.

“I killed him,” Tyler gasps, tears on his face. “I. He wouldn’t stop it. He told them to kill you. To kill so many people. I begged him. I. I would have done anything. And he wouldn’t; it didn’t matter. Nothing I could do _mattered_ and he. He shot me. He tried to shoot me in the head, Jamie.” 

Jesus, Jamie can’t even imagine. Family. It should be sacred. The bond between father and son should be something to count on, to trust. He can’t imagine his father raising a hand to him, much less bringing deadly force to bear.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Jamie whispers. “I’m so sorry you had to make that choice. Tyler, you didn’t do anything wrong. You tried to help your friends. You tried to stop something bad. You didn’t let him kill you. It’s not your fault.”

“I crushed his throat,” Tyler gasps, his own throat too tight to get enough air. He leans into Jamie’s chest; his bony shoulder presses against a half-healed knife wound, but Jamie doesn’t complain.

“I didn’t. Didn’t even mean to. I just. I was so scared, and so mad.” Jamie sits on the driveway, pulls Tyler into his lap, holds him while he sobs, one hand wrapped around the fragile curve of the base of Tyler’s skull, the other around his shoulders. Holds him and rocks him like he’s a child. Lets Tyler cry until he can relax, until he can breathe. 

There was no other choice, no other place Jamie could have said to go. This is where they have to be, but he can’t ask Tyler to go back into that house, that much is clear. 

“Hey,” he says, like he’s dealing with a skittish animal. Tyler is warm in his arms, and Jamie has never held him this way, not even in the cell. “Here, come on. Let’s get cleaned up a little better.”

“No,” Tyler chokes, and Jamie strokes his back. 

“Hey, I won’t ask you to go in. Just the hose, okay? Let’s just. Your hands, your face.”

Tyler swallows and nods, gets up so Jamie can stand. He’s still a little unsteady on his feet, but getting stronger, almost by the minute. 

“I killed that guard,” Tyler says, soft, and Jamie hadn’t heard, hadn’t seen it, but he nods. He brings back the nozzle and sits again. Turns it on the smallest trickle and takes Tyler’s hands in his.

“I couldn’t even.” Tyler laughs, and tears gather in his lashes again. “I couldn’t even watch. I just closed my eyes and swung. Couldn’t keep my eye on the ball.” A father would say those words to a young child, someone just starting to learn how to swing a bat or how to catch. The words are the scar left by a bad relationship, bad parenting, and Jamie aches for Tyler.

“It’s okay,” Jamie says, washing Tyler’s hands, turning them over to get the creases of his wrists, working up to his forearms. With part of his skin clean, the rest looks so dirty. Tyler looks down, at the stark line of demarcation. He reaches behind his neck and pulls his shirt off, baring his chest and shoulders and back to the sun. Jamie trickles water into his hand, smooths it over Tyler’s skin, trying to get him used to the chill of the water a little bit at a time. It isn’t the first time he’s had a bath in a hose, but this is nothing like that, all slow touches and Tyler’s skin under his hand.

Behind Tyler, Jamie sees Jordie come to the door, stand and look out. He doesn’t look upset; it doesn’t seem that anything is urgent. They probably haven’t made the news, then. Jamie gives a small shake of his head, and Jordie nods and goes back inside, leaves the two of them there with the water soaking into their clothes. 

Tyler takes the hose from him for a moment, swishes his mouth with water and spits into the flowers again, drinks and then hands it back.

Jamie is the first to stand up, strip out of the cotton pants the guards had given him. The air feels wonderful, an actual breeze on Jamie’s skin. Tyler hesitates for just a second, and Jamie isn’t going to push, but then he stands up too, takes off his blood-stained and hose-soaked jeans. They kneel again when they’re naked, and Jamie smooths his hand over Tyler’s back, his shoulders, up his neck and over his scalp. 

He can see Tyler. He isn’t blind. His brain processes that Tyler is beautiful, even thinner than he was when they met, his stylish haircut buzzed down, his cheeks hollow. It is achingly intimate, to touch him this way, skin and hands and water. He thinks he should be turned on, that Tyler should too, but the pain, the sorrow, the sadness is too much. Neither of them is hard; neither smells of arousal. The connection hits him somewhere other than lust. He lays the hose down, leans in. He nuzzles against the velvet-soft fuzz of Tyler’s short hair, takes in his scent. He presses a tender kiss to Tyler’s temple, and feels Tyler sigh, feels him relax in against him. He rubs Tyler’s back, and dips his head, lips against Tyler’s cheek, then again at the corner of his mouth. 

“What?” Tyler asks as he pulls back far enough to look up at Jamie. “You’re. What?”

“You kissed me. In the cell.”

Tyler shakes his head. “That doesn’t count. It. I thought I was gonna die. I couldn’t. Couldn’t not-kiss you if we were gonna die.”

Jamie strokes Tyler’s short hair, rests his hand on the nape of his neck. Tyler isn’t pulling away.

“We get to live,” Jamie says, and the moment is so far from anything he could have imagined. “If we get to live, even for a little while, I wanted to kiss you.” He looks down, at where his thigh presses Tyler’s. “I feel. I want. Something. Us.”

He’s ready for Tyler to say no, to say that the artificial closeness of the cell isn’t going to translate into any sort of life outside of it. He’s not expecting the harsh laugh, half sob, that comes from Tyler’s throat.

“You don’t. You don’t want me. You don’t want us. You don’t even know me; I was just there.” He shakes his head, pushes Jamie away, his face twisted with pain. 

“Tyler,” Jamie says as he lets Tyler move him back. “I do know you. You are an incredible person.”

Tyler shakes his head. “I’m not. Not anything. Just some party-boy fuckup. I’m good at spending daddy’s money and getting laid. I.”

It physically hurts Jamie to hear this. 

“You’re not. Jesus, Tyler, you’re the bravest guy I know.”

Tyler shakes his head, but he doesn’t push back this time when Jamie touches him, fingertip resting on his shoulder. 

“I was so scared,” Tyler whispers, eyes down to hide his shame.

“God, Tyler,” Jamie breathes and draws him in. “God, being afraid isn’t the opposite of being brave. Doing what you need to despite being afraid makes you brave. You were the one of us least-trained for that job. You were the only prisoner there who had never fought, never killed anybody. If. If you had gotten out and called Sid and then gave up, if you went back to this house and waited for Sid to come and get us out, I wouldn’t have blamed you. I wouldn’t have cursed you for not doing more. Just thinking you were safe…”

Tyler shakes his head almost violently. 

“Couldn’t. Couldn’t. God, they were gonna kill you. If Jagr got better, they’d kill you.”

Jamie huffs because Tyler is getting away from the point again.

“I know you, Tyler. The people we were, before we went in those cells, those people are changed. They’re gone. All of us, we’re different. More than just the wolf thing. We have to figure out who we are now. I. I want to do that with you.” He pets Tyler’s hair, feeling wild and desperate, the adrenaline of a fight running through him but there’s nothing to claw, bite, hit.

“If you don’t want that…” Jamie starts, not sure how he intends to finish that thought. He can’t go away, can’t let Tyler deal with the world of shit that’s coming without some help. He would give Tyler every inch of space he could though, if Tyler wanted that.

“I do,” Tyler gasps, the words so heavy he can’t breathe around them. “I want. I want.” Jamie holds him close, closes his eyes and holds him. 

They sit together a long time, until Tyler gets restless and Jamie loosens his hold. He kisses Tyler again, small and chaste on the corner of his mouth, and Tyler’s lips quirk, the ghost of a smile playing at the edges of them.

Someone, probably Jordie, put a stack of towels and clothes out beside the door. They get dressed, and Jamie hates this next part, wishes they could just skip it all. There’s just no time.

“We need to get everybody up to speed,” he says. “It would be easier to do it once. Are you okay with that? Are you ready for it?”

Tyler swallows hard and nods. His face is blotchy and his eyes are red, but otherwise he looks better, more resolute, less overflowing with more energy than his body can hold. “Can we…” He gestures at the yard, avoids looking at the door.

Jamie nods. “Of course. I’ll bring everybody out. It might take a bit.”

“I’ll be okay out here,” Tyler says, and Jamie feels weird leaving him, turning and walking away without a guard detail forcing him to.


	25. Moving forward

Tyler waits by the flower bed as the group wanders out in twos and threes. He’s embarrassed at the pity party he threw for himself, at falling apart on Jamie. He flips some dirt over his barf in the flower bed, but everybody except Jordie and maybe Shannon will be able to smell it anyway. Gross.

Dillon carries out one of the big chairs from the living room, offers it to Taylor like she hasn’t been living in a ten-by-fifteen cell with nothing but a mattress for as long as Tyler has known her. She shakes her head, amused, but sits anyway. Hilary perches on one arm, the sun bright on her face, one of Tyler’s snapbacks backwards on her head. 

The twins help Jagr out, one of his arms over each of their shoulders. He’s walking, but not taking his body weight. Something is wrong with his left leg, the foot going off at an odd angle. Waves ripple up the twisted flesh, a shadow of fur-to-skin-to-fur, subtle as a trick of the eyes. They leave him at the edge of the circle, their contempt clear in the careless way they let him down, turn their backs on him.

Nobody is talking to Tyler either, but their glances are warm. Small supportive smiles turn his way. Shannon brings out a huge bowl for him, heaps of pasta topped with peas and garbanzo beans, some sort of creamy white sauce, slices of broiled steak on the side. Okay, Tyler is never trying to kitchen again, if this is the kind of thing she can make from the random ingredients that were there.

Jamie follows the rest of them out of the house, carrying two big cushions from the couch. He drops them on the ground, takes one and gestures for Tyler to take the other. Jordie sits on Tyler’s other side on a step-stool. Their presence flanking him makes him feel sheltered, secure, even though Jordie and Jamie are probably the easiest people there to go through right now, if he doesn’t count Jagr. 

“We need to figure out what we can about the people who took us,” Jamie begins as soon as everyone is out and most of them are sitting. “We need to discuss the vamps, and make a list of volunteers for food-sources and containment if they wake up starving or angry. We need a location to head towards so we can meet up with Taylor’s brother. If anybody is leaving separately, we need to decide what resources we can send with them.”

“Yes, Alpha,” Taylor says, just a hint of humor in her voice. 

Jagr laughs where he lays, a hoarse barking wheeze. 

Jamie blushes at Taylor’s words, ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck. 

“I wasn’t trying to take charge,” he says, and that sends Jagr giggling again.

“Anybody else want the job?” Ryan asks, and everybody looks around, and nobody speaks up.

“Looks like he knows what he’s doing,” Trevor says with a shrug. The other guy from that end, a young kid with wide eyes that’s taller than Jamie just watches like he has no idea what the hell is going on.

“I was a cop, before,” Jamie says, but that’s not why they’ll all follow him.

Jamie gives it another second for anyone to decide they want the leadership position, and then he goes back to what he was saying. 

“We don’t have time to mess around with it too much, but Tyler’s dad was involved. Can you tell us everything you know? Everything that happened from the time you left the complex, so there are no surprises.”

Tyler blinks, realizes he had been zoning out on them. He nods, gathers his thoughts, chews and swallows the mouthful of steak he was eating.

Jamie’s hand is warm on his back, _present_ and it grounds him. He’d think it was a gay thing, a him-and-Jamie thing, but he looks around and nobody is alone right now. Dillon is leaning against the chair he brought, Hilary’s shin against his shoulder, Taylor’s elbow on her thigh. Taylor’s legs are a backrest for Shannon. Ryan and Trevor and the quiet kid are clustered together. The twins sit shoulder-to-shoulder. Only Jagr is untouched, curled alone on the cement. Jordie, who hasn’t lived the blood and death and isolation of the cells, doesn’t seem to notice that nobody is touching him. It doesn’t feel right, and Tyler stretches out a foot, touches his toes to the sole of Jordie’s boot, pulling Jordie into the circuit with him and Jamie whether he needs it or not. 

“I left, and they chased me in the SUV,” he starts, tells them about the shop he used to make the calls from, the police station, his father coming to get him hours later.

Jamie winces at the part when the police booked him. “Okay, Tyler is going to have warrants out on him as soon as the maid gets in tomorrow. He can’t drive anymore. Can’t go shopping, not even a convenience store. No rest-stops, no restrooms, nowhere anybody could see his face.” 

“Shit,” Tyler sighs, but it’s good someone else is keeping track of this. 

“He went in the factory with an ax. Came out without it,” Jordie adds, and Tyler winces. Nobody told him this crap would be on the test.

“Okay,” Jamie says, and Tyler trusts him to have a plan, even if it’s just making sure Tyler spends the rest of his life hidden. “The earlier we can get out of here tonight, the better.”

 

Tyler tells them about begging his dad to send in the troops, about going into the hall and the call he overheard. “He didn’t know I was there. I don’t know if it was an accident that it was me, that they grabbed for Jamie, or if the girl in the van knew me. I didn’t recognize her, but…”

“But?” Hilary prompts him. 

Tyler shrugs.

“I did a lot of drinking. Lots of parties, clubs. I met a lot of people. People I don’t know recognize me all the time. Or. Used to. So who knows.”

“Can you remember?” Jamie asks, “Exactly what he was saying?”

Tyler tries again. “He said to pack the uniques to move to another location. If Jagr died, they needed you alive, because they suspected you changed me and they needed a wolf who could change people. For ‘Phase Two.’ Otherwise to kill you. He said to pack Taylor, both vamps, you or Jagr, and to fight the rest to death in the arena. Put bullets in whoever didn’t go down.”

“No.” Jagr’s voice is raw, and he pushes himself up to sit. “Other location. Where.” 

Tyler shrugs. “I don’t know. I have his phone. There might be stuff on his laptop, but I’m sure there’s a password. He worked for a big company. He was head of new projects development. The government gave them a lot of money. They tried to build new weapons.” He looks out at the group, most of them born-human. “Or make them.”

Unhappy murmurs go around. Dillon growls, lower than any of them can manage, a deep rumble that Tyler can feel in his chest. 

They’re still listening, waiting for the end of the story. 

“I went back in. I told him to call the complex and tell them not to hurt anybody. He wouldn’t. He. He pulled a gun, and I tried to stop him. I got. I got mad. He shot me and I crushed his throat.”

“It’s okay,” Jamie tells him again, and it doesn’t feel okay, it feels like too little too late. He should have known, should have been around to see instead of spending as much time as possible away from the man’s presence. 

“Okay, so we need to get the computer. I’ll go through the office, looking for important papers, any kind of link to another location, even hotel receipts might give us something useful.”

A pencil scratches, Jordie taking notes on a shopping-list pad.

“Useful for what?” a twin asks. 

“If we’re going to get ahead of this thing, if we’re going to have a chance of going home to our families, we need ammunition. Something to blackmail them with at the very least; something that could send people to jail would be better. Some way of stopping what they’re doing for good.”

Tyler doesn’t know if that’s even possible. People like that, they don’t leave loose ends, don’t suffer the consequences of their actions. He won’t stomp on Jamie’s hope though, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“You find this place,” Jagr growls. “You find and I go there.” The wise-cracking asshole is gone, and Jagr’s eyes burn with rage and loss. “They say. They kill my pack. Three, they catch with me. Wolves with an Alpha, they do not bend, do not obey. They take them away from me. There were screams. Shots. Quiet. They say to me they shot them. They dead. Maybe.”

“Maybe they aren’t,” Tyler sighs. Shit. 

Jamie nods. “We’ll find what we can. They’ll be expecting an outside assault now though. This time—it was easy. Tyler caught them by surprise. They didn’t expect him to come back, and definitely not so quick.” He hesitates, and Tyler can hear the weight of his words. “I broke a promise to you. I won’t make another one, but. Let’s see. Where we are, what we can do together, when the time comes.”

Jagr shows teeth, but he doesn’t argue. 

“The body,” Jordie says, getting things back on track. 

Tyler feels sick, can’t deal with this. 

“I don’t know,” Jamie says. “It would be hard to make it look like there’s no crime scene there, especially since he’ll be missing, and the house is trashed.”

“Whatever,” Tyler says. “I don’t care.” 

“So we’ll leave it,” Jamie says.

“We could burn it,” Ryan puts in.

Jamie shakes his head. “A fire might not destroy enough to be worth it, and it gets the authorities involved a lot earlier. Any witnesses to the U-haul leaving will have fresh memories. This way, we’ve got all night to drive before anybody starts chasing us.”

Ryan frowns, but doesn’t argue. 

“The complex still isn’t on the news. There must have been some kind of cleanup, some cover-story ready to go. Or else it really is that isolated, sound-wise, and none of the neighboring businesses called it in. There was at least one guard still up when we left.”

Jordie grumbles. He’s still moving stiff. 

“There were reinforcements coming,” Tyler adds. “They were supposed to be there in twenty-four hours.” He tries to do the math in his head. “Early morning, maybe like three AM?”

Jamie nods. “It’s too risky, going back. We need to heal up, get somewhere safe.”

“Vamps,” Jordie says, ticking off another item on his list.

“We don’t know if their sleeping like this is normal, or if the guards did something to them. I think we should open the boxes one at a time come nightfall. Play it by ear after that. See if they’re hungry. Do we have volunteers on that?”

If it wasn’t high noon, Tyler would expect the sound of crickets. 

God damn it. 

“Yeah. I’m in.” If the idea of Jamie biting him to make him a werewolf was the scariest thing he’d ever thought he’d allow to happen to him, the thought of feeding himself to fucking vampires makes him want to piss himself, but nobody else looks eager for the job. 

“Me,” says Taylor, chin tipped up, defiant.

“Absolutely not,” Jamie says. “Either of you. Tyler, you bled too much, slept and ate too little. Veto. You too, Taylor.” 

“I’ll do it,” Dillon says. Hilary nods, mouth tight and unhappy. 

The twins (Tyler knows there’s a Marc and a Jared, but fuck if he can tell them apart) grumble but agree. Ryan says yes, but Trevor has a previous grudge against them and snorts when Jamie looks his way.

“Hopefully that’ll be enough,” Jamie says.

“I’m in,” Jordie adds, and Jamie frowns.

“We’ll talk about it if it comes to that. You’re the only one with a valid driver’s license.” Tyler can’t help but notice that the people closest to Jamie have the best excuses.

“Where to go and when to leave,” Jordie says, diverting the conversation with the ease of long practice. He doesn’t really look much like Jamie, but he handles him like he’s done it all their lives.

“As soon as we know what’s going on with the vamps.”

“They have names,” Shannon says. The snakes shift under her hair, agitated despite her even tone.

“Roussel and Phillipe,” Jamie corrects himself. “We need to know what they need, and if they want to stay with us or split off on their own.” 

“We camping in the yard?” Jamie asks Tyler. The mosquitoes will eat them alive, but he can’t…no. 

“Shove a mattress in the van,” Jordie suggests. “Hang sheets over the doors. It shouldn’t get too hot in there.”

“Yeah, that’ll work. We can leave it in there when we go, to make it more comfortable for us in the back.”

“We’ve got the when,” Jordie says. “So where are we headed at nightfall?”

“North,” Taylor puts in. “We head north. Sid heads south. We meet in the middle.”

Jamie nods. “We can do that.” 

Tyler leans in against him.

“What resources do we have?” 

“Eight grand cash,” Tyler says. “I don’t.” Tyler swallows. He’s such a fucking wimp. “I can’t go in there again. But take what you need from my room, the kitchen, whatever.” An entire house full of stuff. Some of it has to be useful, doesn’t it?

“A rifle that ties to a dead guard at the cement factory,” Jordie adds. 

“Bought legally?” Jamie asks and Jordie nods. “Clean it, keep it with us,” Jamie says. “We’ll alter the ballistics when we get somewhere out of the city.”

Tyler leans against Jamie’s shoulder, his head feeling heavier by the minute, his belly full of good food. The sun feels so good; the air is so clean.

“Not much left in the kitchen,” Shannon says. “I’ll keep cooking whatever won’t travel well. Nobody will leave here hungry, but we’ll have to buy food as we go.”

“The rental car,” Jordie reminds them.

Tyler falls asleep to the sound of his group planning out the details. His part is done. For real, this time. He can rest. The sounds of their voices lull him to sleep. He wakes up when the van’s motor starts, but Jamie soothes him back into a light doze.

“The guys brought your bed down. You want to lay down? My back is killing me.”

Jamie is a freakin’ werewolf; there’s no way sitting up for a hour is hurting him. Still, if Jamie wants him laying down, Tyler is happy to be horizontal.

It’s weird and silly, to have his mattress outside, sheets and pillows bright in the sunshine. Jamie stretches out and Tyler settles close to him, hand resting on Jamie’s stomach just below his ribs. People come up, ask Jamie things. Tyler hears the clunk of boxes being moved, maybe luggage or something. 

Tyler dreams of the SUVs, chasing him down, motors gunning and an unending void all around him, smooth cement and nowhere to hide, an unmarked parking lot that stretches from horizon to horizon. He runs, barefoot and vulnerable, dodging panicked as they swerve to hit him.

A car door slams and he startles up, blind in the sunlight. Jamie is there, hands on Tyler’s shoulders. 

“It’s just the van. Jordie and Hils went to get the car and buy some things. It’s okay. It’s just Jordie and Hils.”

Tyler is too shaken to lay back down, but he leans against Jamie’s side, heart pounding and breathing hard. 

Taylor comes out of the house, another bowl of food in her hands. She’s wearing a skirt now, a woman’s t-shirt that fits her. “Shannon said to feed you.” It’s rice this time, with canned tomato, chicken breast, some sort of spices that Tyler didn’t even know were in the house.

Taylor sits down beside him, shares a glance with Jamie and Jamie stands up. It feels like something they planned, like they had to work around Tyler freaking out all the time, and he hates it.

“I’m gonna go see if I can find anything useful in the office,” he explains. “Is there anything besides the laptop that you know of? Anything I should look for?” 

Tyler shakes his head. “There’s a safe, but…” The only person who could open it is dead. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jamie says. 

Tyler scoots over enough that his shoulder touches Taylor’s. He eats his food and doesn’t watch Jamie go.


	26. Vamps

The sun goes down and the outside lights click on, bathing the driveway and grounds with golden artificial brightness. 

There’s still nothing from the vamp boxes—no noise, no movement, and Jamie knows it’s his job to call it. He has no idea what to expect. No idea what risk he’s exposing his people to. But Roussel and Phillipe are his people too, brotherhood forged in a shared history of pain. If Tyler wouldn’t leave them, Jamie can be half the leader they seem to think he is and take care of everyone to the best of his ability. 

“Let’s bring them out to the driveway,” he says. More room to fight if they need to. He really hopes they don’t need to.

Dillon and Ryan carry out one box the twins get the other. Trevor offers to go walk the perimeter, and if he’s got problems with the vamps then Jamie figures that’s a good idea. Taylor is far back, Tyler beside her, Jordie behind them even though he grumbled about it. They figure out, by weight, which is Roussel. They all agree that it’ll be better to start with the one who they’re sure speaks some English.

Shannon shines an industrial-strength flashlight down on the box, and Jamie steps up to open it.

Contents have shifted during shipping. Rouss is scrunched up in one corner of the box, his neck at an uncomfortable angle, face lax and eyes closed. He was always a pale dude, even in the arena, but he looks waxy now, his skin translucent and stretched tighter on the bones of his face than Jamie remembers. His naked chest doesn’t seem to move—no sign of breath, of life. He smells like an old library, but not of death. Jamie leans in, presses his fingertips under Roussel’s jaw, but he can’t feel a pulse. He pulls Rouss down some in the box, straightens his spine out. The man doesn’t twitch.

“Let’s see if he’s hungry,” Dillon says, and holds out his arm for Ryan’s knife. The cut is quick and shallow, more meat than vein. Dillon has to squeeze his forearm to get a drop to fall before his metabolism starts to heal the wound. The crimson drop lands just above Roussel’s upper lip.

For a second nothing happens, and then Roussel’s nostrils flare, taking in the scent of blood. His eyes snap open, wide and lost, searching their faces, five werewolves and a Medusa looming over him, people he has fought with in the arena, people that have caused hurt and been hurt by him. 

“Phillipe,” he breathes, and surges to a crouch. “Phillipe! What have you done to him?” He sways. Jamie doesn’t know what happened to him, but he’s weak, shaking. 

Ryan bares his teeth, a growl low in his throat. Jamie grabs him by the back of his shirt, drags him back, clearing the space between the boxes. “Let him through!” Jamie orders, and Roussel scrambles through the gap, claws the lid off of the second box, frantic. 

Phillipe looks so small when Roussel pulls him out, thin and limp. “Non,” he whimpers, pulling the boy up. He taps his face, rocks him, takes the smear of blood off of his own cheek and brings it to Phillipe’s lips. 

The group makes a looser circle around the vamps, and Jamie crouches down to talk to Roussel at their own level. He’d forgotten, how tiny the boy is, how fragile-seeming. If he didn’t know better, it would be impossible, that this is the guy that kicked Jamie’s ass that first day.

“Is he gonna be okay? What does he need?” 

“He need feed. Need blood.” 

Jamie waves Dillon closer, and the big man comes, the kitchen knife in his hand held light between thumb and forefinger. He sits down, and Roussel watches him, kicked too many times to not be wary, but a desperate hope burns in his eyes. He watches, silent, as Dillon uses the blade, cutting deeper himself than Ryan had dared to. Blood wells up, runs around the curve of his muscle, drips down the inch to Phillipe’s lips. The first drops fall and Phillipe breathes in a low hiss. His eyes snap open, that freaky pale gray in a field of red, veins brilliant and so densely packed there is no white between them. His hands flash up, grabbing Dillon’s arm. He pulls himself up to bring his mouth to the slash, the barracuda-fangs latching on hard enough that the muscles in his jaw bunch and clench. 

Dillon makes a pained grunt and Roussel puts his hand over Dillon’s wrist. Not holding, begging. 

“They take so much. They. Take the blood. Take the blood right out of us. So hungry. So so hungry.”

Jamie checks Dillon’s face. His eyes are closed, pinched shut in pain, but he’s not pulling away. “Dillon? You good?” he asks, and the man nods. 

Jamie waves one of the twins up, Jared he thinks. “You too,” he tells Roussel as Jared takes the knife. 

The vamp shakes his head. 

“No. No, I am. Too much a bébé. Too much new.” When he’s not screaming threats or trying to bite Jamie’s face off, there is a surprising vulnerability to the man. He looks exhausted, but he cradles Phillipe like he would guard him to his last breath.

“I don’t understand,” Jamie says, sitting down on the ground since it looks like there’s not going to be any fighting. 

“You feed Phillipe, Phillipe feed me. The fresh blood, I cannot drink.” 

Jamie nods, remembering the black goo that Phillipe had for blood when they fought, Roussel the same, the many times the met in the arena. It kind of breaks his brain, that Rouss is the younger. He always knew they were a package deal. To know that Roussel can’t survive without Phillipe, it doesn’t change much.

“Look, so, things are kind of complicated right now. We wish we could give you more time to make up your minds, but…”

Behind him, the guys are loading the vehicles. Too much crap. Too much _evidence_ but they have to have some of it, and it won’t be too hard to dispose of it all with the van in the morning.

“Can you two eat on the road?” Jamie asks. Roussel nods, though he doesn’t look eager to let go of Phillipe. “What about the sun? Should we take these boxes with us?” 

“Only to go far in bright sun, would we need the boxes,” Roussel says, “I have only ever a little bit burned.”

“We’ll take them just in case,” Jamie decides. 

Dillon looks a little ashy, so Jamie nods to Jared. Jared cuts his arm, blows across the wound to waft the scent of fresh blood to Phillipe. Those weirdo eyes snap open, turn Jared’s way. Roussel helps him to his feet and the skinny kid stalks after the new meal into the back of the van. Roussel follows, weak and shaky. 

“Jordie,” Jamie calls him over. He doesn’t like the idea of his brother driving separate from him, but he’s the only one who can take getting pulled over. “I’m sending Hilary and Trevor with you. Stay behind us, but keep us in sight. If it looks like we’re getting pulled over, you burn past, get the cop’s attention off of us. Try to keep it less than twenty-five miles over the limit, but you can rev the engine, make a show of it. You pull over as soon as they’re coming after you and not the van. You be polite and calm and do whatever they say. Take the ticket and get back on the road. Call us when you’re clear.”

Jordie nods, brown eyes solemn. “Jamie…” he starts, but there’s nothing they can do differently. A second vehicle is too useful to not use on this trip.

“I don’t like it either,” Jamie says. He reaches out, grabs Jordie in a tight hug. He wants to say thank you, for coming for them, for helping Tyler, for being so damn chill about them being a bunch of freaks now. It’s too much like goodbye though, and he just holds him crushingly close for long moments, listening to each other breathe. 

Jamie finally sighs and steps back. Time to be the leader and not the little brother.


	27. On the Road

The back of the van is like a blanket-fort on steroids. It’s dark inside, so little of the yard’s lights angling in through the front windows. Tyler thinks if he was still normal, still human, he would barely be able to see anything. The back has only two windows on the side door, and they have been covered by faux boxes taped over the insides. The van looks full of junk instead of like it’s carrying a load of people. Behind the boxes, there’s the mattress that Tyler and Jamie slept on for part of the night, and the cushions they’d already brought out, the vamp boxes (which are apparently okay to sit on when Roussel and Phillipe aren’t in there), the safe from dad’s office, still shedding drywall dust from where Jamie and Dillon ripped it from the wall by brute force. The rifle is in one of the boxes, because Jordie’s car has to be clean if he gets stopped, and the van is fucked either way. 

They bring the sheets of the beds people slept on, and Jamie makes one last pass through the house with a pair of spray bottles after everyone else is loaded, destroying as much of the fingerprints and DNA as he can. 

Jamie trade phones with Jordie, so Jamie can listen for trouble on the police-scanner app they installed on it while Tyler was resting. The data plan on the burner wouldn’t have held up to the sheer stream of information. Jamie listens in as they finish getting ready to go, people packing into the back of the van. It all sounds like gibberish to Tyler, but Jamie doesn’t seem confused. He might think of himself as an ex-cop, but Tyler thinks he’s making one hell of a criminal.

There are technically fewer people in the back of the van, with Jordie and Hilary and Trevor in the other car. With more stuff packed around them, and the vamps out of their boxes, it doesn’t feel like it. Jagr is in the back corner, Shannon in the passenger seat, Ryan and the quiet kid along with Taylor and Tyler and Dillon on the side that isn’t door, twins and vamps on the shorter side. It’s more comfortable, but still going to be a claustrophobic ride. They prop some pillows up for Taylor behind the driver’s seat, and she calls Tyler to her, lets him put his head in her lap. He has to curl up tight to make room for Dillon at his feet, but he doesn’t mind. It’s not as good as laying next to Jamie, but close. Taylor scratches her blunt nails against his scalp through the short fuzz of hair, and he settles. 

Marc explains their escape to Roussel while his brother Jared plays blood-bank. Roussel listens, glances over at Tyler. He looks thoughtful, perplexed. Like he’s adding Tyler up and getting a number he didn’t expect to. 

Jordie drives off first, even though he’s going to be following for most of the trip. To make sure nobody is watching for them to leave. Jaimie waits, for Jordie to get far enough ahead that they won’t seem to be together. The phone chirps with a message, and he puts the van in drive. 

Tyler can’t see anything beyond the ceiling of the van going lighter or darker as they pass street lights, business signs, parking lots. There are plenty of cars on the road this early in the evening, and he holds his breath, listening for the soothing chatter on the scanner to go urgent with his name, or a siren to sound behind them. He wishes they could have left a note for Maggie, to not go into the office, to just call the cops, but Jamie said that would implicate him too strongly. 

Phillipe drinks Jared pale and groggy, and then speaks to Roussel, soft words in French that send Roussel’s eyes to the floor of the van. Phillipe reassures him, draws him closer, Roussel on the floor of the van and Phillipe sitting on the boxes. It is something raw and naked, so intimate Tyler doesn’t feel like he should be looking but he can’t turn away. Even if he could, he would hear it. 

Roussel rests his cheek against the outside of Phillipe’s knee, and Phillipe strokes his hair, bends to kiss his head, and then offers his wrist. 

Roussel cradles Phillipe’s slim pale wrist like a priest with a religious relic, takes a slow breath of anticipation and then darts down to bite, to drink, soft hungry noises slipping from his throat. Phillipe’s face twists at the bite, but his other hand strokes the back of Roussel’s neck, soothing him to drink slower, to gentle the hold he has on the boy’s wrist.

Jamie drives, but he’s still recovering, and an hour into it, he tells Shannon to call Jordie, say he’s pulling over to switch drivers. Ryan takes the wheel, and Jamie clambers into the back to take his space. Tyler leaves his spot between Taylor and Dillon. He wants. Wants Jamie, wants to be close. It must show on his face, because Jamie gives him a fragile smile, opens his knees and makes himself into a chair for Tyler to lean into. He smells like harsh chemicals from spraying down the house with the stuff Jordie brought back from Wal-Mart. Tyler’s nose burns, but he doesn’t complain. 

“Tell me about Sid,” Jamie says to Taylor. 

“Sid is…” she struggles for a word, and Tyler understands how hard it could be. If he had to give one word to describe Jamie, he’d be fucked. 

“He is Alpha,” she finally decides. “He is father and captain and brother and friend. He works hard. Expects a lot from himself and other people. He likes things a certain way.”

“Alpha. You’ve said that before,” Jamie prompts. Tyler really likes the way he can feel Jamie’s voice through his chest, the weight of Jamie’s arm around him. “What is Alpha?”

“Alpha is a title. An expression of respect. It’s earned, not taken. A pack can have more than one, although they’re usually a mated pair.”

“Alpha is protect,” Jagr speaks up from his corner. “Alpha is guide, Alpha is provide. Alpha is shamed to live if the pack is dead.” 

Honestly, Tyler almost liked it better when Jagr was being a dick. 

“And I’m. You think I can be that for these guys?” Jamie asks, his voice soft, uncertain.

Tyler shifts around so he can see Taylor’s face, the way she assesses Jamie, the quirk of her lips. 

“I think you’ve been that for a while.” 

Tyler’s boyfriend is kind of the best. He wonders if it’s a wolf-thing that his chest swells with the idea of it. 

 

=================  
They drive through the dark. Jamie would rather have let his people rest before getting on the road, and they switch drivers every hour or so. Tyler sleeps in his arms, warm, free and alive. Jamie is almost overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility. His job, to keep Tyler that way. 

Around eleven, there’s chatter on the scanner, an APB out on a van and he lifts his head, listens for a while, but it’s not them, not yet. 

Taylor calls Sid, says things like “I would have died there,” and “They need a fresh vehicle. Something the police aren’t looking for.” They debate back and forth. Sid’s help is what this entire plan hinges on. Without it, they have to decide. Should they split up, hope as many as possible slip away from the cops, from the acquisitions team coming after them again? Stay together and take the higher risk that they’re noticed by the authorities, grabbed together? 

Around midnight Sid calls again. Taylor listens, nods to herself. “Yeah. Okay. We can meet you there.” 

“There’s a state park, just over the Missouri state line. Roaring River. He said to get in the park, and they’ll find us a place there. They should be there a little after dawn.” 

Jamie hates to give up the control. To let someone else pick the location. They can’t keep the van though; it’s too distinctive, too rare. If they get rid of it and Sid doesn’t or can’t come through for them, he’s got fifteen people in a five-person car. He runs his tongue over his teeth as he thinks, over the sharp point of the regrown canine tooth.

Not Sid’s home turf either, though. Probably somewhere he’s never been. 

“Okay,” Jamie agrees. “We’ll head there.”

============


	28. Alphas

Roaring River State Park is a sprawling place. Four-thousand-some acres, according to the internet. Wild country, rolling hills, heavily wooded. The occasional bare rock face where water and time have cut everything soft from the bones of the land. A serpentine river branches through it, making a maze of peninsulas. The overhead map looks thorny, small streams flowing into the larger waterways. It reminds Jamie of the Pacific northwest, of home. The road curls between hills, the shoulders widening out on one side or the other with scenic outcrops or picnic spots. Side-routes branch off to trail-heads for hiking, paths to campsites. 

They follow the GPS directions, stay on the main road for six-point-three miles, onto roads with more and more cryptic names. Numbered farm-roads become just short strings of letters and digits, until the directions say their destination is on the left, and on the left is a narrow strip of blacktop threading into the shadowed forest. They turn, Jamie behind the wheel, Tyler holding onto the back of his seat, leaning down over his shoulder to see through the windshield. Jordie’s car crawls behind them; Jamie catches the barest glimpses of their headlights.

“Jamie,” Taylor says, her voice soft. “Try not to get worked up when we get there. First meetings between Alphas can be…tense.”

He glances into the side-view mirror again and another set of headlights follow Jordie’s car. He can feel the hair on the back of his neck bristle. 

They turn the corner, and the road opens up into a broad parking area. There are six vehicles there that Jamie can count—an unknown number behind them. An empty spot waits for them, four parking places wide. Jamie puts the van dead center of the middle line. Jordie pulls in along his right, halfway into the space so the van’s doors aren’t obstructed.

“Wait,” he says, stands up, stooped over, and moves for the side door instead of the driver’s door, gestures Taylor to follow him. He wants to see her home safe, but she hasn’t seen her people yet, and he won’t let her be the first to be exposed. He climbs out of the van, into the anemic light of dawn. There are people, at the edge of cleared land in front of the parked vehicles. It would be impossible to not recognize them for fighters, for warriors. 

Dillon comes out after him, and Roussel, their heaviest fighters. The doors of the car open; Hilary and Trevor climb out. Jamie told Jordie to stay put, and he hopes to god his big brother listens. 

Dillon reaches back and offers Taylor a hand out of the van, and the wolves at the edge of the forest move forward. The man in the center is not the largest, but there’s an air of command, an edge of impatient entitlement to the way he stalks forward, counting on his larger flankers to guard him. Dark-haired, like Taylor had said, broad shoulders, fit compact body.

“Sid!” Taylor breathes, but she doesn’t push past Jamie, doesn’t run to him. 

Jamie can see it in the other man’s face, the precise moment when this goes from Sid meeting broken refugees to Sid meeting another pack, another Alpha. His eyes narrow and he slows his advance. Hazel eyes flick over Dillon and Roussel, behind Jamie like the others have followed them out of the van. 

Sid has twice the sheer numbers Jamie does. They move in formation, trained in fighting as a team where Jamie’s people have only fought against each other.

“Taylor,” Sid calls, and she glances to Jamie before she steps forward. Sid leans forward, his frown sagging with relief. “Taylor.” 

Jamie nods her to him and Taylor goes, stepping over the parking curb and through the dewy grass. Sid hugs her as his backup watch Jamie’s pack. 

A flinch goes over Sid’s face and he pulls back from Taylor, one hand going low on her stomach. His face twists, with sorrow then rage and beyond to the wolf. “Who?” he snarls through teeth not meant for a human jaw. He leans in, sniffs at her belly like he can test the paternity with a whiff. 

“Who did this?” Sid growls. 

Jamie stands taller, clenches his jaw. 

“Nobody!” Taylor says. “Nobody here. The guards, they. It was a doctor. They brought him in just for the day. He. Did a procedure.” 

Jamie’s nostrils flare, his lip curls. If this asshole doesn’t stop making her air this to the entire fucking world, they’re gonna have a go. 

“Who,” Sid repeats. “The other half. Who is the father? Who let this happen?” 

More people come out of the woods. Jamie’s pack is all out of the van now, Jordie standing up and closing the car door behind him. One of Sid’s women comes up to Taylor, tries to draw her back until Taylor snarls at her, yanks her wrist out of the woman’s grip. 

“God damn it Sid!” Taylor snaps at him. “Turn it the fuck off. There was nothing. Nothing anybody could do there.”

“I did it.”

Dillon’s low rumble is soft, but every head turns his way. The muscle in his jaw twitches, but he faces Sid head-on. 

“Oh shit,” Tyler swears behind Jamie. 

Taylor—she doesn’t look surprised. 

“I didn’t know. What they were going to do with it. Taylor wasn’t even there yet. They bribed me with books, and I jerked off in a cup for them.” 

Sid surges forward a step and Jamie shortens the distance by a step of his own. They’re just out of arm’s reach now. Jamie is pretty sure he can take Sid if it comes to it. The rest, he’s not so confident of. The numbers don’t favor his group.

“They had Jagr, making wolves for them,” Dillon goes on, his words measured like he has thought about this for a long time. “There was no reason to get her pregnant, unless they were trying for hybrids. So it’s mine, unless the vamps…?”

Rouss shakes his head without looking away from the foreign pack. “No. They take blood sometimes. Not that.”

Sid shifts like he’s bracing to charge Dillon and Jamie will not allow his people to get hurt. Not over something nobody could have prevented. 

“Hey!” 

Sid turns his attention to Jamie. 

“You want him, you gotta go through me first.”

“Sid.” Taylor’s voice is hard, a throwback to the days when her and Jagr tore into each other with words and Jamie got caught in the crossfire. “Sid, if you want any of them, you’re gonna have to go through me too.” 

Sid takes a step back, claws biting into his palms, still braced for a fight. Jamie watches as he gets control of himself, nostrils taking in their scents, breathing hard. He looks from Taylor to Dillon to Jamie, across at the rest of them, poised for a fight. 

“What the hell,” Sid mutters, eyes narrowed. “This isn’t…Taylor, this isn’t a pack. This is…they’re not even all wolves. Bears and vampires and fucking—” he waves a hand towards Shannon. The snakes in her hair sway and hiss. “I don’t even know what. This isn’t family.”

Jamie feels a low rumble coming from his own chest. Feels his skin start to itch with the change held back by force of will alone.

“Sidney,” the tall guy next to Sid says, quietly appalled. Sid flushes, color sweeping from cheeks to jawline. He looks down, fists his hands at his side, takes a step back. The tall guy touches Sid’s wrist with his fingertips and Sid seems to settle even more.

“Shit, I…”

“None of us wanted this to happen to her,” Jamie says. “But it’s done. Unless…” he looks at Taylor and she shakes her head, puts a hand protectively over her belly. Jamie would rather not be on the receiving end of that glare again.

“What we _can_ do is strike back at the assholes who did this, and maybe help some people that are still trapped in hell.”

Sid thinks it over, glances at his second for his opinion and gets a slight shrug. 

“Come. Sit,” Sid’s second says, gesturing at a cement picnic table at the end of the cleared space. Jamie glances back, to see who is coming with him, who he should bring. Taylor steps up, and that’s good; she’s probably the best person to have to deal with Sid. Jagr steps forward too, a smile on his lips that is half snarl. 

Tyler meets Jamie’s eye, and Jamie wishes he could spare the break in concentration to hug him, to tell him it’s all going to be alright.

They walk through the dewy grass. Taylor slides onto the bench seat, takes the middle, less strategic spot. Jagr takes her right and Jamie the left, where they can get out easily. Sid and the tall guy and a blond woman take the other side. 

“Here’s what we know,” Jamie starts. It’s going to be a long talk.

===========  
Jamie turns and meets Tyler’s eyes and Tyler tries to put every bit of trust, every bit of confidence he has in Jamie into that glance, that brief moment before Jamie is taken away again. 

They wait. The sun comes up over the trees. Roussel and Phillipe start to look wilted, heads hanging heavy, pink darkening across their cheeks, their arms. Phillipe leans against Roussel’s back, his alien eyes closed to thin slits, mouth parted as he pants softly. 

“Hey,” Tyler says. “Why don’t you two wait in the shade.” 

Roussel licks his lips, looks over at Jamie and then nods. The vamps go back into the van, leave the door open. 

Tyler watches as Jamie talks to the new wolves. He says something, and Sid shakes his head, hopeless denial. Gets up from the bench and turns his back on them. A ragged howl tears from his throat, and he half-doubles over in a sorrow so deep it hurts. 

Taylor gets up, and goes to him. Sid startles at her touch and turns on her, wrapping her tight in his arms, crying into her shoulder. 

Shit, that’s heavy. 

It takes a long time before Sid can go back to the negotiating table. He leans forward, listens to Jamie’s every word, intent. Jamie ticks something off on his fingers, one two three. 

The twins sit down on a log that marks the edge of the parking area. Dillon takes the next one over and Trevor joins him. 

“Looks like it’s gonna be a while,” Jordie says, and offers half of the car’s hood for Tyler. 

The other wolves have gone back to the treeline, clustered in little groups talking amongst themselves, heads turning to following the action at the table and at the parking lot.

Jamie is the first one to nod and then stand. Tyler watches his body language, the way he turns his side to Sid and his people. He looks troubled, but not like they’re about to fight any second. Jagr keeps himself just to Jamie’s left and behind, between Jamie and the new wolves. 

Sid’s two backups leave Sid and Taylor alone at the table, heads bowed as they talk some more.

Tyler stands up as Jamie comes over. He wants to rush into Jamie’s arms, wants to sniff him all over and make sure he’s okay. He bites his lip instead, holds himself back.

“They’re going to help us,” Jamie says. “They’re going to take the car and U-haul, take them off in separate directions for a few days and then turn them in to the rental agencies. They have a vehicle for us, and some land out in western North Carolina that we can camp on, rest up. Money to tide us over for a couple months if we need it.” 

“What do they want in return?” Jordie asks. 

“The safe, the phone and the laptop. Sid thinks they have a guy who might be able to help out with the phone and computer, and the safe is just a matter of time and effort. Depending on what they can find out, me and Jagr and whoever else is willing are going with Sid and his people to any other facilities they have. He wants his sister safe, and since she chose to stay with us, that means keeping us safe. I think I believe him.”

He looks around, at their people, their pack. 

“If anybody has a different plan, I need to hear it now. If someone wants to split off, this is a good time for it.” His gaze settles on Tyler.

Tyler shakes his head. “I’m in,” he says, and watches the minute easing of Jamie’s shoulders. Tyler never thought of himself as the commitment type, but this. Jamie. He’s in for the long haul.


	29. Settle

They drive, another twelve hours in the powder-blue Antioch Baptist Church van that Sid gave them. It comes loaded with everything they need for a week or more— food, water, clean clothes in a variety of sizes. Everything they need to camp, from tents to cooking gear. They get to the land the GPS says is theirs, and then—

They stop. 

They put down their meager roots, a small scattering of tents around a central cooking and socializing area. The bare bones of a campsite are already there; Taylor says her pack uses it for ceremonies at the summer and winter solstices. Not every year, but enough that she knows the nearby town, where the water is.

For the first time in almost two months, Tyler isn’t locked in a cell or running for his life (or Jamie’s life). He doesn’t know how to quit moving, not until Jamie comes and takes the stack of dead branches out of his arms, takes both of Tyler’s hands in his and holds them until the world stops spinning, until Tyler can’t feel the hum of the road underneath him anymore.

“You okay?” Jamie asks.

Tyler gives a half-laugh, shakes his head. “You?”

“No,” Jamie admits, and it’s easier than lying to each other. The bustle of the campsite goes on around them; Shannon marshals the troops to set her up a working kitchen space. Dillon and Taylor have a low, serious conversation. Ryan and Trevor dig a latrine further down the path.

Jamie’s eyes drop to Tyler’s mouth. Tyler has plenty of time to pull away. Leans in instead. Meets Jamie’s lips, a slow kiss that is scent and sight and smell and touch. Tyler has kissed a lot of men, but this, Jamie, it’s new and exciting and real like the ground beneath his feet, the sky over his head.

They part. It would be the perfect time for someone to cat-call, to tell them to get a room, but nobody does. 

“Come lay down,” Jamie says. “Everybody is fed. Everyone has a place to sleep. Come to bed.”

Tyler aches with the idea of it, every ounce of exhaustion suddenly coming down on his shoulders. 

“Come with me,” he says. “I can’t…” 

“Okay,” Jamie says, not making him get the words out.

They go to their tent, the biggest that’s only gonna be shared by two people. They’ve got an air mattress set up, camp-lantern and sleeping bags. Tyler crawls up the bed, makes room for Jamie beside him. It is objectively a less comfortable place to lay than their mattress in the cell, but Tyler isn’t complaining. 

Jamie takes off his shoes and stretches out. Tyler rests his hand in its place on Jamie’s stomach, but he spent so long in the van just drifting in and out of sleep that he can’t find it now. Jamie is warm, soft under his hand, and he leans in, puts a tender kiss at the center of Jamie’s lower lip. 

Jamie makes a contented hum, and Tyler has never needed encouragement to be bold before. He sucks Jamie’s lip between his teeth, presses down just hard enough to feel the thickness of it, the meatiness. 

Jamie groans, slides his hand up Tyler’s side before he freezes, holds himself tense.

“Jamie,” Tyler says, soft. He opens his eyes, stares down into Jamie’s. “This. You don’t have to protect me anymore. If. This isn’t what you’re looking for, I need a sign.” 

Jamie pulls him down, buries his face in the crook of Tyler’s neck, breathes him in.

“I want too much,” Jamie admits. His tongue flicks out, samples the taste of Tyler’s skin. 

“That’s not a real thing,” Tyler complains. “Too much would be more than I want, and I want it all.” 

Jamie pushes him back, far enough that they can see each other’s faces again.

“I…” Jamie starts, and Tyler kisses the rest of the words away, fierce and hungry, trying to smother the self-doubt he sees in Jamie’s eyes. 

Tyler can feel the moment when Jamie breaks through his own restraint, when Jamie nips his lip, rolls him over, stares down at him. He is fucking magnificent, and Tyler wants. Wants to feel that power turned on him. He rolls his hips, grinds his dick against Jamie’s jeans. 

“Jamie,” he pants, lifts his head for another kiss. “Jamie. We gotta. Naked. We gotta naked.”

Jamie grins, and pulls back like it’s killing him. Strips out of his jeans while Tyler wriggles out of his, pulls the shirt off over his head and comes back, so much skin on skin. 

Tyler groans at the feel of it, his hips slow-writhing on their own, driven by instinct to touch, to feel, to get some friction. 

“I never. Never thought…” Jamie says, but then he interrupts himself by spitting in his palm, shifting around so their dicks are lined up and wrapping them both in that slickness. 

Tyler thrusts, up into Jamie’s hand. Against Jamie’s dick. The air in the tent smells like them, like life and arousal and hope. He cries out, the sound half-caught in his throat. He should be embarrassed, that the others will hear, will know what they’re doing. He likes the idea though. It isn’t exhibitionism that makes his cheeks flush with pleasure. Something else, something deeper. 

A howl cuts through the deepening dusk, joyous and proud. 

“Jamie!” Tyler cries again, sweat-slick as they rut together. Jamie presses his face back to the crook of Tyler’s neck, licks and then bites. Not to break the skin, but it grounds him, brings him sharply _here_ and now. He comes, and Jamie growls around a mouthful of Tyler’s skin, jerks once more and joins him. 

==============

Out on the hill above the camp, Jagr keeps watch, guarding over this ragged tangle of survivors. Sidney had been right, he thinks. They’re not a pack, not a family. 

But they can be. They will be.


	30. Into the Light

The sounds of snarls and tearing fabric wakes Jordie up, the pale sunlight filtering through the rainflap of his tent telling him it’s too early for this werewolf bullshit again. 

He scrambles out of his tent, bringing the rifle with him just on the slight off chance that it’s not more of the order-establishing, boredom-alleviating squabbling that the wolves are doing among themselves. 

He’s not surprised that it’s the twins (not actual twins they’ve said, a year between them, swear to god. Nobody believes it) tearing hunks out of each other, their own tent in shreds around them. They’re shifted, dark fur and snapping fangs. 

“Hey!” A voice calls from the other side of their campsite. Jamie, skin rippling as he changes, roaring as he wades in, kicking them apart, pinning one to the ground with his foot and shaking the other with clawed hands. Jordie has seen it before, Jamie like this, but the sight still makes his guts clench. Jesus. His baby brother. 

“Enough!” Jamie snarls and shoves them apart. They go down and stay down, crouched low. Jordie feels the comforting weight of the weapon in his hands, tries to plan his move if they jump Jamie. He considers if he should even try to help or trust Jamie to kick their asses on his own. 

Roussel crawls out of his tent; Hilary and Jagr come down from where they’d been keeping watch on the road. Tyler steps in beside Jordie, half-naked, his body tense and wary. The rest make a ring, watching, and Jordie waits, heart pounding.

“You want it?” Jamie asks, challenging the twins. His voice is warped by the teeth, by the inhuman shape of his jaw, but still clear enough. “You want to be Alpha?” He stares one down and then the other. Snarls until they tip their heads, baring their throats. Makes them whine as they wait for him to accept their surrender.

Between one heartbeat and the next, the moment is broken. Jamie yips and bowls one of them over, shoving and play-fighting. Jagr strips out of his clothes, stretches buck-naked in the morning sunlight and then shifts. He shoulder-checks the other twin and then takes off, Hilary on his heels, Jamie right after her, the rest of the wolves following. Taylor follows last, her swollen stomach showing even in Lon Chaney form.

Dillon remains, and Shannon. Roussel squints and swears and goes back into the vamp’s tent-under-a-tent they’ve got set up for maximum sun protection.

Tyler. Tyler stays where he is, hands clenched and breathing hard enough that Jordie can hear it. 

“Did you want to…” Jordie starts. He reaches out, fingertips light on Tyler’s arm.

Tyler jerks back from the touch with a snarl and a flash of teeth. He stumbles back, shakes his head, apology and rejection in one gesture. Then he turns, still human-shaped and wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. Slips into the woods on the opposite side of their camp than Jamie and the rest of the wolves went. 

Jordie frowns and watches him go. Jamie might be rocking the leadership position, but he’s fucking up in the relationship department. Jordie would set him straight, if only he had a clue what Tyler needed that he wasn’t getting. 

Jordie is helping Shannon and Dillon with the morning meal-prep when Tyler comes back, less than half an hour later. He crouches at the flap to the vamps’ tent, talks through the nylon for a moment, and then lifts it, crawls inside. 

Roussel comes out a little later, a cocky smirk on his lips, grabs a can of pineapple and goes back.

Fuck.

============

Jamie nips the twins into motion, drives them ahead of him until they hit the woods. He surges forward, young and strong. Jagr and Hilary split apart and he rushes through the opening. Dodges through the woods. He hears the pants and eager whines of his pack behind him. They need. They need to move, to stretch, to live. This rest was good for them at first, days without fights, without bleeding, without cages. But then the squabbling started. The twins unable to peacefully share a tent, unwilling to split up. Ryan asking to call his wife twice a day and having to be talked down. Jagr prowling the perimeter when he’s not sleeping in four-footed form outside Jamie and Tyler’s tent. Trevor pestering Dillon until the big bear shifted and held him to the ground until the fight went out of him. 

Tyler isn’t okay at all. He looks nothing like the smiling boy in the photographs at his father’s house, haunted and twitchy outside their tent but practically jumping Jamie every time they were alone. Jamie doesn’t want to tell him no, but he feels like something is wrong with saying yes.

This though, this he can do, lead the chase through untouched wilderness, muscles burning, lungs heaving as he leaps a rotten log, bursts from the underbrush and startles a deer.

The hunt is on then, instincts pushing him to chase the running thing. The pack spreads out behind him, and he pushes on the right, turns the deer left and left again into Jagr’s waiting jaws. The pack piles on, blood bright and copper in Jamie’s nose, between his teeth. It is simple, and good. He tears into the deer’s abdomen, finds liver hot and rich. Looks for his mate, to share this with. Tyler, he thinks, joyous. 

But Tyler isn’t there. Hadn’t followed them. Hadn’t run. Jamie whines, and Hilary bumps his shoulder. 

He makes contact with each of his pack, nuzzles necks, licks the blood off of furry faces. 

And then he leaves them. Heads back towards camp, following the pull of his heart. Towards Tyler. 

==============

Jordie and Dillon and Shannon are cooking when Jamie gets back. Leaving his tent naked and shifted seems like a dumb idea now that he’s less pissed off, less furry and still naked. 

Jordie looks up as Jamie steps out of the woods, something on his face that Jamie doesn’t know how to read. 

Tyler is nowhere in sight, and Jamie’s nostrils flare, seeking the scent of him. 

Jordie glances over at the vamps’ tent, and Jamie frowns. Jagr had fed them the night before, but the blood Jamie smells is fresh, bright and familiar. 

He’s moving before he knows it, Jordie in front of him, hands on his chest but not slowing him at all. 

“Wait, wait, Jamie listen,” Jordie says, and Jamie won’t hit him, won’t strike his very human and very fragile brother, despite the way Jordie is keeping him from Tyler. 

The words barely register in Jamie’s ears, but Roussel must hear them, because he comes out of the tent. His expression is hard, determined.

“What did you do?” Jamie growls. 

“Comfort was asked for, and given,” Roussel says. Jamie breathes in again. He knows the scents of Tyler fucking, Tyler coming. All he smells is blood, faint but certain. 

“Jamie,” Jordie says again, refusing to budge, separating them with his body. “Jamie, he went to them. You have to—”

Jamie is not interested in hearing what he has to do. He grabs Jordie by the waist and lifts him, moving him handily out of the way.

Roussel bares his crowded mouthful of fangs. “You will take him? Against his wishes? Will you chain him, if he wants to come back to us? Cage him?” 

Jamie falls back like he’s taken a bullet to the chest. 

“No.” The word is a breathless choke. “No, he can go where he wants to. I just…” 

Roussel’s expression doesn’t soften, but the threat of bloodshed feels much less imminent. 

“He goes where he wants,” Roussel agrees. “When he asks for you, we will bring you. It is a promise.”

Jamie takes a breath and nods. Steps back. He really needs some pants. He needs. To know what the fuck is happening. 

“Jamie,” Jordie says for the third time, and Jamie is finally able to listen. 

“Yeah.” He heads for the tent he shares with Tyler, and Jordie follows him.

“He’s having a rough time.” Jordie says it with the air of a vast understatement. 

Jamie clenches his jaw. Where the fuck are his clothes. He flips a shirt onto the air mattress, roots around and finds towels and socks and everything is dirty, everything stinks. 

“I know that!” Jamie snaps, and feels immediately sorry for it. “I can’t—I can’t do everything. I. If there was someone else that I could turn this whole fucking mess over to, I would. If I could go back, and keep this from happening to everybody, I would. There just. Isn’t anybody, and my magic fucking wand is broken right now, and Tyler is falling the fuck apart and I don’t know what the hell to do!” 

Jordie sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, little brother.”

Jamie balls his hands into fists, stares down at the pair of shorts he’d been looking for, sitting right there all along. Fuck.

“I need you beside me,” Jamie says. He’d been thinking it for days, but this, now, it needs to be said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jordie says.

Jamie pulls the shorts out of the pile and puts them on. It’s easier to have important discussions without his dick hanging out. 

“I want you to be one of us,” Jamie clarifies. “I want you to be pack. To be wolf. I want you bitten.” 

He looks over and Jordie is frowning but not saying no.

“Jamie, they’re never going to respect me like they would you.”

Jamie shakes his head. Jordie wasn’t in the cells, didn’t fight in the cages. “I know that. I just. Want you there. So you can step in without getting hurt. So you can kick some sense into hot-headed assholes when they’re being dumb.” It isn’t how he wanted to ask. He’d wanted to sell Jordie on the whole freedom/power/joy of it, how good it feels to be part of a pack, and not on how much Jamie needs him. 

Jordie sighs. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I’m in. You know. That there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you if I could.”

Jamie nods. It’s been that way since before he could remember. He didn’t doubt it now, but it sure feels good to have it confirmed.

=============

“Will you chain him, if he wants to come back to us? Cage him?” Roussel’s raised voice isn’t muffled at all by the thin walls of the tent. Tyler closes his eyes, tries to pretend he’s not hearing it, Jamie angry, Roussel in danger of losing his temper. He drifts a bit, misses something, and then Roussel is ducking back into the cool darkness of the tent.

Getting chewed on by a vampire isn’t like they make it look in movies. No heroine-sweet blissed-out rush. It hurt like a sharp-toothed animal biting a hole through his skin to get at the gooey center, and he thinks if he wasn’t a fucking werewolf that he’d have some amazing scars now. It hurt, but after, there is a floating time, like he skipped the orgasm straight to the afterglow. Everything is soft, distant, and he surrenders to the drift, to Phillipe’s chill fingers stroking over his face. 

Phillipe says something in French when Roussel comes back, stretches out on Tyler’s other side. That’s awesome. He appreciates it. That there’s no chance of him hearing something that makes him try to pull himself up before he’s ready. 

“Tyler,” Roussel says, and slips a straw between his lips. The can of pineapple rings was the closest they had to orange juice, too sour and sweet at the same time, but Tyler sips anyway. Sleeps for a while and wakes up still held, still safe. 

“Better?” Roussel asks, like he’s wanting Tyler to share state secrets. Like the answer matters. 

Tyler takes a breath and does an assessment of how he feels, physically and mentally. There’s no pain at all, no ache or hurt from the bite. Still a little tired, because he donated enough blood to feel light and he hasn’t eaten enough to rebuild those cells. Emotionally…it’s like coming home from vacation, finding the same clothes in his closet, the same shoes by his door. Better for the break, but nothing has really changed.

He must hesitate too long, because Roussel frowns. Takes a minute and makes sure the English is going to come out right.

“Jamie. He is…good for you? Kind?”

Phillipe makes an unhappy murmur and Tyler wonders if he understands more English than he speaks. 

“Yeah,” Tyler says, no pause this time. Of all the things he might have mixed emotions about, this is not one of them. “He’s. Great. He takes really good care of me. Even when I’m a fucking mess.”

Roussel soothes his hand over the short-shorn stubble on Tyler’s head, leans down and kisses his forehead. “You say the word and we go. Take you with us. Gone like a ghost.”

Tyler snorts. A midnight run away from Jamie is the last thing he wants or needs. But it’s sweet that they’d offer.

“Thanks.” His lips quirk and he shakes his head. “But why. Are you guys unhappy here? Are you leaving?”

The two share a glance. “We want to see this other place,” Roussel says. “To see if there are others of us. Old ones or bebes.”

Tyler tries to add two plus two and keeps getting six. “But why would you leave with me if you hadn’t gotten what you were staying for yet?”

Roussel lowers his gaze, a tightness around his mouth that hadn’t been there before. 

“You come back for us. Hilary told us yesterday; she came to say sorry. She would have left. You had Jamie. You had a open door in front of you, and you say no. Come back looking for me. Phillipe.” He takes a deep breath. Color spots his pale cheeks, dark and splotchy on his porcelain-pale skin. “I would have gone. If Phillipe was safe. I would have left you. Left every fucking one of you. Not our kind. Not our friend. But you come back. This. Is no small thing. This will be repaid.”

=============

It’s late afternoon when Tyler stumbles out of the tent. They’d fed him canned fruit and beef jerky in little nibbles all day, but the rich smell of whatever’s cooking for dinner draws him from their bed, makes him face the pack, face Jamie.

Conversation falters as Tyler steps towards the fire, the pack gathered around it. Jagr offers Tyler the bowl in his hands and Tyler takes it. He can feel all the eyes on him, watching him. Jamie’s most of all, staring at Tyler like something is breaking in his chest. Tyler knows, he knows he’ll have to go to Jamie eventually, knows he’ll have to face his own shittyness, face how he hurt Jamie for no fucking reason. 

He sits, on the log bench between Jagr and Hilary, eyes down and eats the stew, wipes the bowl with a slice of white bread Jordie brought back from the town’s grocery store the day before. Jagr takes the empty bowl, and another full one is put in his hands and he eats that one too. Drinks the bottle of water that’s passed to him. 

And then Jamie is up, moving slow and careful around the edges of the fire’s range. Tyler knows Roussel and Phillipe are still behind him somewhere, watching over him. He isn’t afraid, just ashamed, to have made such a fuss. 

Jamie kneels at Tyler’s feet, looks up at him, and Tyler’s face burns, that he’s made this happen.

An instinct that Tyler is pretty sure he didn’t have before all this, the cell and the bite and tearing the comfortable decadence of his life to shreds, is screaming that Jamie should not be there, should not be kneeling and sure as hell not to Tyler.

“Don’t. Jamie, don’t. Get up. I’m…” He shakes his head. 

Jamie’s hand is warm on Tyler’s cheek, and he looks up to see everybody is still there, Jagr at Tyler’s side still, Jordie standing past Jamie’s shoulder. Jordie has slapped himself in the face and then left his hand there like he can’t stand to watch this train wreck.

“You’re not okay,” Jamie says, and Tyler feels sick. It’s. It’s a fucking werewolf intervention. Fuck his life.

He doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what they want him to say.

“I feel like we’re failing you…I’m failing you. Tell me what you need. Anything.”

_I need you to fuck me,_ Tyler thinks, because everything is so much simpler when they’re making each other come, when he’s doing something he’s actually good at.

Everyone is watching him, shifting uneasily. 

“I’m. I’ll do better,” Tyler promises even though he’s not sure what he’s doing wrong, what makes them think he needs to be managed like this. 

Jagr groans, and Tyler grits his teeth. 

“What do you want from me?” he asks, the words slipping past his control. “I can’t…I don’t…” Hot tears burn his eyes and he jerks back from Jamie’s touch to wipe his face. 

Jamie waits. They all wait. Tyler takes a rough breath. Tries to figure out what the fuck is wrong with himself.

“I don’t fit,” he says, choking on it. “I don’t…I didn’t live through what you did. I don’t…nobody fights me like you do each other. I’m. I’m outside.”

One of the twins, Marc, Tyler thinks, hisses through his teeth. 

“No,” Jagr says. His shoulder is solid against Tyler’s. “Not outside. Like it should be. This. This bickering. This fuss and snap. They did this to us. Pain until we forget gentle ways. You think nobody challenge you because you’re so low?” 

Tyler swallows. Nods. Fuck, if he’s just gonna say it like that…

“You are the alpha’s mate,” Jagr says, and that brings more heat to Tyler’s cheeks. Not like they weren’t completely obvious about it, but still. “It is a position that cannot be fought for. A place of respect. Of. Of care. Even without Jamie, maybe nobody would fight you. Not follow you, maybe, but the thing you did, it is more. More risk. Sacrifice. Nobody fights you because we all don’t know if we’d be that strong. To be free and come back to hell for some strangers. Enemies even.”

Jamie’s hands cover Tyler’s, where they rest on his knees. 

“A pack would have to be so sick, so wounded, to cut their own heart out,” Taylor says, and Tyler figures she would be the one to know.

“I want…” Tyler’s breath catches. “I want to run with you. Hunt.”

Jamie meets his eyes and nods, solemn. “We want that. We all want that.”

Tyler looks around, and nobody is rolling their eyes. Nobody is distancing themselves from Jamie’s idea of ‘all.’ 

“Come with me,” Jamie whispers, and long hairs grow in around his eyes, down his jawline, as Tyler watches. “Run with me. Please.”

Tyler’s chest aches, and he realizes he’s holding it in, holding back the change. He hasn’t let it out. Not since the night of blood. 

He stands and Jamie stands with him. Hands behind pull his shirt up over his head, Jagr helping strip him. He’s always been so proud of his body, but he’s underfed, under-muscled and bony. 

Jamie doesn’t seem to see Tyler’s weakness, his harsh edges. His fingertips go to claws in Tyler’s hands. 

Tyler shakes out of his jeans and his shoes slip off of his narrowed feet. His face aches like a good stretch, bones doing what bones should not do. Taylor whines eagerly, already shrugging off her dress. The wind ruffles his hair. 

He opens his hands, opens his heart, and lets the change take him.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Death of major characters (not Jamie or Tyler). Kidnapping, torture, violence. Non-consensual impregnation of a female character. Death of innocents. Threats of sexual violence.
> 
> Minor roles filled by:  
> Taylor Crosby  
> Antoine Roussel  
> Brenden Dillon  
> Andrew Shaw  
> Hilary Knight  
> Shannon Szabados  
> Sidney Crosby  
> Evgeni Malkin  
> Amanda Kessel


End file.
